From the road…day 1

4 AM was the time I’d set to leave but as I woke up earlier than my alarm, I left the house at about 3:30 AM. The good part about leaving at that time and in the dark is that there are very few people on the highway. The two bad things about leaving in the dark are you miss all the really beautiful scenery in the first part of the drive and you really have to pay attention to the road to be sure no elk, deer, or other wild animals come charging out into the road. So I’d been the road for 2 1/2 hours when the sun began peeking over the horizon.

I ran into an issue with a detour that immediately added half an hour to my trip, a trip where because of time zones, I lost two hours on the first day. Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time so when I got into New Mexico it was an hour later, then another hour later when I passed into Texas. But an unexpected issue made itself blazingly obvious when I turned east—the rising sun was directly in the middle of the road just over the horizon. I could barely see. I Jerry-rigged an additional sun visor by putting a CD envelope (not a case) in the bottom of the mirror on the sun visor so I could just see the road but not have the sun directly in my eyes. This is a little of how it looked without that. Bad photo but taken with great care which is the important thing.

When things improved, this is what I saw.

However, the detour that I was unhappy about, turned out to be the high point of the entire day. I drove through a part of New Mexico that was beautiful. I plan to visit it on the way back.

Out of the window…

And then there was snow!

And another from the van.

Despite the early start, attack by the sun, and detour, I arrived on good shape in Amarillo, Texas where I checked in to The Big Texan motel. Well, I didn’t actually have to check in. I was sent a room number and the code this morning and email so I just went to my room and went in. After a bit of a break, I walked over to their restaurant.

But all that’s another story. That’s it from the road today. Tomorrow I’m on my way to Rolla, Missouri. It’s a shorter day so I don’t have to leave so early. But as I wake up early, we’ll see what happens. As Scarlet O’Hara famously said, “Tomorrow is another day.”