Day 1 – “The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here I am in Texas yet”
I was reminded of this saying as we approached Amarillo at the end of today’s drive. We left home about 7:15 on a clear, sunny morning with the sun at our backs. The day before we left home we reached 105 degrees so we expected another hot one today – and it was.
We stopped in Fredericksburg for breakfast at the award-winning Rather Sweet Bakery. I topped off my meal with a fresh kolache made with local peaches. How could the day go wrong? From here on it was easy for Rita to navigate as we stayed on highway 87 all the way to Amarillo. That will change.
We had nice hill-country scenery through Mason and Brady which is not far from the geographic center of Texas. After Brady, cactus and live oak trees give way to flat land with mostly mesquite trees. Near San Angelo the fields are used for growing cotton but we only saw plowed fields, no cotton. I suspect this has something to do with our drought.
In San Angelo we stopped for gasoline as the price was $3.57 a gallon. That will change too. Before we left home we filled up with gasoline at $3.65 and I thought that was a bargain. About noon we arrived in Big Spring, the temperature was at 100 degrees and we were hungry. As often happens, we drove through town wondering if any of the restaurants were good (they didn’t look especially good) and stopped at the last one on the edge of town. A truck stop, no less. They did have a salad bar and we remained good by only eating a little salad.
We continued on through wind farms and pumping oil wells to Lubbock and reached Amarillo after driving about 500 miles. There was still plenty of daylight left and I could have driven more but enough is enough. We ended the day with steaks at the Hofbrau Steak House and a bottle of Shiraz – not something that we intend to continue or we won’t fit in the car for long.
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