Monday, June 16, 2008

Day 14--Santa Fe, NM. to Amarillo, TX: Half way there!



Since this has seriously taken forever to upload the pictures tonight, and I promised Daren I'd be to bed by a certain time, I'm not saying how late it is now, but this will be the shortest blog to date...I hope. We had a great day today, and a very enjoyable and scenic drive. But first, we have hit the half-way point in driving from Santa Monica to Chicago, and it happened tonight on our way through Adrian, Texas.

We are also halfway through our entire trip, two weeks down, two weeks to go!


Yea, we are half-way there!


Last night when I was doing the laundry (thank you so much to Daren for writing the blog last night--it saved me!), I was thinking about how we could make the drive more enjoyable for everyone--not that the boys don't love their movies, but something had to change because they seem to be getting a little bored of the movie thing so they just bug each other, and then that gets Daren and I going and pretty soon we are all at each other. The thought came to me that I should switch places with Ben and it would still be possible to navigate, so we switched today and it was sooooo much better! Ben was up in front just talking Daren's ear off, and was so cute about it today, so hopefully it will be a good thing still, in the future. I had fun sitting back with the twins, and it was a more peaceful ride, at least until they both wanted my attention at the same time--Will wanted his "sugar love" from me, and wanted to take full advantage of having me back there with him! While we were driving through Santa Fe this morning Ben was my helper in taking pictures because he was up front, so I thought I'd include one he took. He loves these stop lights because they are so different from what we are used to at home.


We found this old abandoned Route 66 bridge on one of our side trips and it worked well for a family picture.

We had the hardest time trying to find a place to eat lunch today, so when we saw this church we decided to stop--mostly so Will would stop asking for his peanut butter and jelly sam-itch!


Ben bought these dominoes from a kid selling them at a gas station in California a couple weeks ago, and who knew they would turn out to be the hot toy! There have been some serious battles over them today.

We found a park in Tucumcari, New Mexico, for the boys to play at, but there were only a couple of swings so they decided to make their own fun--and a pretty good mess of themselves


Name this place from the Cars movie...it looks like the mountain which overlooks Radiator Springs, in the shape of a radiator cap. It's Tucumcari Mountain, which we passed today...more Cars trivia tomorrow.


So a couple of days ago we bought the Indiana Jones trilogy for the boys to watch, and they can't get enough of it! For those of you who have been around Will at all the last couple of months, you know he can sing that song a million times in a row, and he will just sit there forever and look at the main menu screen for one of the movies and listen to the song over and over.


We made it to Texas today! We were just barely getting used to being in the Mountain Time Zone, and now we are in the Central Time Zone, and the constant switching is going to kill me off!

If I hadn't left my purse at the restaurant we ate at for dinner, we would have gotten to the Cadillac Ranch earlier for better pictures, but oh well. These are all Cadillacs just buried in the dirt and anyone can spray paint them at any time. They were pretty funky!!

And now for the signs of today:


A Mexican sombrero at the entrance of this restaurant



All these signs were taken in Tucumcari, NM, except the Santa Fe Trail...and that was just out on the road somewhere!

Who can resist Smokey the Bear?! This one is for Susan, Daren's mom!!


We saw this sign in Glenrio, a town on the New Mexico/Texas border, and on this side which faces west, the eastbound traveler sees "Motel, first one in Texas." On the other side used to read, for the westbound traveler, "Motel, last one in Texas." Very clever!

Total mileage to date: 3,090.8
Weather: sunny and a hot 98 degrees,
Premium gas prices around town: $4.09

3 comments:

Brandon and Lori said...

So that Cadallac Ranch-the Duggers went there on their trip to Disneyland. They are the ones that have 16 kids. All of their names start with "J", I think that would be a little confusing. It looks like a fun time. I trade Jack all the time now when we go for long trips. It helps just as much with the little boys as it does for Brandon and I. Drive safe!

Alisha Joy said...

Cadallac Ranch . . . I must see that! Another cool day.

Callisto said...

I'm loving all the pictures. You've got the camera eye, that's for sure.