A Little More Texas, A Lot of Hooker, Oklahoma

Hello again friends. Our last episode concluded on Sunday, August 14th, with us staying at the Oasis RV Resort in Amarillo, Texas. We are planning to be here in Amarillo until the end of the week.

Monday, August 15th, was a stay at home day. I spent most of the day on some minor chores I needed to get accomplished. I finished scanning the last of the photo albums from my parent’s collection. I now have all their pictures, from the 1930's through 1997, digitized and stored. I am going to send DVDs with all the pics to my four brothers. I also did some minor repairs to the coach and, of course, published the most recent installment of our blog.

Tuesday we decided to go catch another movie and went out for an afternoon showing of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” I have to say it was a very enjoyable movie, although the plot seemed to drag just a hair in the first third. I was very impressed with the way the script was carefully crafted to integrate with the original 1968 film. There were a couple of quick references to a missing space mission, which could easily have been overlooked by someone not familiar with the original plot, that made the first real link. It was all wrapped up in a neat little package with the final vignette that actually appears after the credits start to roll. The first “end” scene of the movie actually had me saying to Jackie, “well, that was a somewhat unsatisfying ending,” Then a few moments later it is all tied together. Brilliant. I was also pleased by the homage to the original movie with the line, “take your stinking paws off of me you damned dirty ape,” one of Charleton Heston’s iconic lines. All in all, a very good movie, even if you aren’t old enough to remember the original. After the movie we went back to the coach for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, August 17th, we went out after lunch to do some shopping in preparation for our scheduled departure from Amarillo on Friday. We will be heading up into Oklahoma and Kansas for a couple of weeks and will be in rural areas for the next couple weeks. Our first stop was the local Sam’s Club for what we had hoped would be a booze run. Unfortunately, after we got into the store I realized that Texas was one of the majority of states that doesn’t allow the sale of hard liquor (“spirits” in the nomenclature of the liquor laws) anywhere except a state approved liquor store. Regular stores can sell beer and wine, but no spirits.

We are so used to being in California and Arizona where all liquor can be sold in any store that gets an license. New Mexico also allows sales in retail groceries, so I hadn’t even given it a thought when we walked in Sam’s. But, no sprits for sale. We made a stop at a regular liquor store after leaving Sam’s and found the price there to be almost exactly 50 percent higher for the large bottle of Absolute at a Costco or Sam’s in New Mexico, Arizona or California. Oh well, we will buy it when we need it rather than stock up. After Sam’s Club we went to the local Walmart and stocked up on groceries before heading back to the coach for the rest of the day. I did go down and spend a little time in the hot tub before dinner.

Thursday, August 18th, we stayed at the park for the day, for them most part relaxing. We did do our laundry at one of the laundry facilities in the park and I spent a half hour or so cleaning up outside to be ready to travel tomorrow.

Friday, August 19th, was a travel day. We packed up the coach and left Amarillo about 10:00 a.m. heading North. We are headed for a little town called Hooker, Oklahoma, located in the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle on U.S. 54. We had a very nice drive, most of which was in the panhandle of Texas. Much of the route was four lane divided highway, relatively flat with little traffic. Once we crossed the border into Oklahoma, where they grow a lot of corn and wheat, we started seeing a lot of grain trucks on the road.

We arrived in Hooker about 1:00 p.m. and found an open spot in Alice’s RV Park, the only RV park in Hooker. Alice’s place is on a large corner residential lot which has been set up with six pull through RV sites, of which two were open. We discovered Alice’s place in the Passport America book. It does not appear in any other travel guide, such as Trailer Life or Woodall’s. Passport America (PPA) is a program that we have used since we first started traveling full time and provides information on RV parks that offer half price camping. Each park has it’s own rules such as how many days you can use the discount, seasons, holiday exceptions, that sort of thing. Alice’s was listed as having full hookup 50 amps sites, regular price $30 per night, $15 per night for PPA members with no time limit. We found a pretty level grass and gravel site with the advertised 50 amp hookup along with water and sewer connections. Other than the sites being pretty close together, enough room to get the slides out, but not a whole lot more, the sites were very good. There is no one on-site at the park, only a self serve station with a lockbox in which to put your registration and money. When I got the envelope out I found the regular price had been reduced to $20 per night, which meant the PPA price was $10. For a decent full service site this was an absolute steal! There aren’t even any Elks Lodges that are that inexpensive. I registered for three nights and put in a check for $30.

Now, the reason we are stopping in Hooker, Oklahoma, population 1,200 or so, is to visit Don and Wanda Fischer. We first met Don and Wanda at our first FMCA rally in Minot, North Dakota in 2006. They are also members of two FMCA chapters that we belong to, the Elks International Chapter, and the Full Timers Chapter. The Fischer’s at that time were in their late 70's, but very active, very friendly people. Don is a very outgoing person who hugs everyone he meets and he called himself “the Hugger from Hooker.” Over the ensuing years we often ran into Don and Wanda at various rallies and FMCA Conventions. Because of Don’s outgoing personality and his self imposed moniker, they were easy people to remember. We only saw them at rallies, so we didn’t become close friends, but we were always happy to see them and always had time to chat with them when we ran into them.

While we were staying in Amarillo I was looking at a map, plotting our next route, which was originally intended to take us to Dodge City, Kansas. I noticed that the best route from Amarillo to Dodge City took us right through the panhandle of Oklahoma, and right through the town of Hooker. Naturally, we thought of Don and Wanda. We were afraid that we might miss them since the FMCA Convention was going on in Madison, Wisconsin the second week of August, while we were in Amarillo. Jackie called Don and found that they were, in fact, at the rally in Madison, but they planned to leave there at the end of the week when the rally closed and head for home. Don anticipated they would be back home in Hooker by Friday, August 19th, the same day we would be passing through town. At that point we modified our plan and made Hooker our destination.

Hooker came to be in the very early 1900's when the Rock Island Railroad ran a line between Liberal, Kansas and Texas, near what is now Texhoma. Texas and Kansas were already states with set boundaries, however what is now Oklahoma was just a territory. At that time the strip of land between the State of Kansas and the panhandle of the State of Texas was called No Man’s Land. When the railroad went in through No Man’s Land in 1902 towns started to pop up every ten miles or so along the rail route and Hooker was one of the them. The town was named after a local cowboy and cattle ranch foreman named John "Hooker" Threlkeld. His nickname, Hooker, came from his ability to lasso, or“hook,” a calf on the first throw of his rope almost every time. The town was laid out in 1904 and the name has stuck. Don Fischer’s family came to Hooker about 1915 and started farming and ranching in the area. Don, who is now 80 years old, tells us he now lives in a house only two miles from where the house in which he was born used to be. A fourth generation of Fischer’s still works a very large farming operation just outside of town.

We got settled into our spot at Alice’s and called Don and Wanda to invite to our coach for cocktails later in the afternoon. They came over about 5:00 and we had cocktails and some great conversation. Don loves to tell stories and talk about the history of Hooker and we really enjoyed learning about his life here. Later in the evening we went with them to a local restaurant on the main street of town. The restaurant is called the Hooker Soda Fountain and Grill and is decorated in a very 50's retro way with all kinds of memorabilia on the walls and counters. They also had a good menu with everything from hamburgers to steaks and Mexican food. Jackie and I both had rib eye steaks which were quite good. After dinner Don and Wanda took us on a driving tour of Hooker which included a huge amount of trivia and historical information about Hooker and it’s residents. We very much enjoyed the history lesson. Don and Wanda finally dropped us off at the coach about 9:00 and we crashed for the night.

Saturday, August 20th, we drove out to Don and Wanda’s house about 11:00 a.m. They live on a county road seven miles West of town. There are only a couple of houses on this road between their place and the edge of town. Their closest neighbor is about three miles away and their house lies on a corner of a section of land (one square mile) that Don still owns. Although Don is now retired and no longer actively works on the farm, he is still a farmer at heart and never throws anything away. He proved that to us when he opened his garage and showed us a very nice 1958 Ford Thunderbird hardtop sitting in the back of garage. It is pink with a white top and is 100 percent intact. It would still take a lot of work to restore since it has been sitting in the garage for over 20 years and the interior leather and fabric would be rotted and dried out, but there is no body damage, all the chrome and glass are there and even the paint appears to be in good shape. Needless to say, as a car guy, I was awestruck that he had such a jewel in his garage and didn’t seem to have any idea what he was going to do with it. 1958 was the first year for the four seat Thunderbird and the car is gorgeous. I envy whatever relative eventually gets that car.

Don and Wanda then proceeded to take us on a five hour tour of the surrounding area, including the two Fischer family operations. We also stopped at the Hitch Feedlot, which is the largest cattle feedlot in the area with a capacity of some 80,000 head. Since he knows everyone in the area we were able to go inside the control room of the feed mill where they mix their feed and also in the equipment room to look at the grinding machines and the grain elevators, sorters and mixers. It was a fascinating tour. The entire time we were driving around looking at various parts of the operation Don was explaining everything in great detail. The two family operations were typical farm lots with dozens of machines, tractors, trucks, trailers and other equipment parked all over the place. As I said before, farmers never throw anything out, including old equipment. There was a 1950 and a 1952 Ford pickup parked on the lot, just sitting there - great candidates for restoration. There was even a WW-II era truck that they use as a winch truck. It is amazing the amount of money that farmers and ranchers have invested in equipment. We saw easily several million dollars worth of equipment during our tour of the two operations.

We also stopped for lunch and again went into the Hooker Soda Fountain. Lunch was also pretty good and I bought a Hooker Car Show tee shirt. Had to have something from Hooker, Oklahoma. We then went to the Hooker Chamber of Commerce gift shop and found a whole collection of Hooker tee shirts. Hooker has made the best of their name and everyone who lives there calls themselves a Hooker. They have a tee shirt at the shop that said “Hooker, Oklahoma” on the front and “A Location, Not a Vocation” on the back. Very funny. I did buy another Hooker tee shirt there, but not that one. I bought one that has a replica of the famous Las Vegas welcome sign with the slogan “what happens in Hooker, stays in Hooker” lettered underneath. Very funny shirt. We then went back to our driving tour of the area.

After several hours of touring we went back to the Fischer house where we sat and talked for a little while before we left. We left their house about 4:30 and decided that we would drive to Liberal, Kansas to visit the Elks Lodge. We knew that they were open on Saturday, but not on Sunday or Monday, so this might be our only opportunity to visit there. Liberal is only 20 miles Northeast of Hooker on Highway 54. There is also an Elks Lodge in Guymon, Oklahoma, 20 miles Southwest of Hooker, which is the lodge Don has belonged to for many years. However, that lodge is only open sporadically and Don had called and found that they would not be open today. We arrived at the Liberal Elks Lodge about 5:30 and found a very nice building with a very pretty bar. There were a lot of people in the lodge, but they were all in the back room playing in a Texas Hold’em poker tournament. There were only a few people in the bar, but they were all very friendly. We had a cocktail and talked to the bartender about lodge pins, but she was unable to locate any.

While we were sitting at the bar enjoying our cocktail, we made the decision that we were going to extend our stay in Hooker a couple of days to give us time to explore and do some geocaching on our own. While we have enjoyed our time with Don and Wanda, and learned a lot, we also wanted to do some caching and spend some time exploring on our own. Since Alice’s is so inexpensive, and we had no set schedule for a couple of weeks, we saw no reason not to stay for another couple days. We told the bartender that we would be back to the lodge on Tuesday and asked if she would try to find someone who might know where we could get a lodge pin. After our cocktail we drove back to Hooker and stayed in the coach for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, August 21st, we got up and left the coach a little before 11:00 and went to church. As our regular readers will know, we are not regular church goers, but Don and Wanda had invited us to go to church with them and we thought that was very nice of them and agreed to meet them there. They attend the United Methodist Church, which is in the middle of town, just a few blocks from our RV park. It was a very pretty church, built in the early 1950's, and we were welcomed by everyone in the congregation. Don and Wanda were very gracious to introduce us to everyone and we felt very welcome. The service was very nice and the pastor’s sermon was based around his recent trip to the Holy Land and was accompanied by pictures projected on a large screen. Very interesting and reminiscent of a similar trip made by Father Ned and Reverend Kathy, the priests in our church back in Indio. They went to the Holy Land several years ago and told many of the same stories.

After the church service we went back to the coach and changed clothes so we could go geocaching later. We then followed Don and Wanda back to Guymon for lunch. We were joined by Wanda’s son and daughter in law, Doug and Diana Brown. They were very nice people, just a little younger than us. We also enjoyed the fact that they had done a little geocaching and were very familiar with the hobby. They helped us explain the sport to Don and Wanda. After a good lunch at a local Chinese place, the six of us went to a park a few blocks away to find a geocache so as to be able to show Don and Wanda what we did in our spare time. After finding that cache we said bye to everyone and went off on our own for some caching in Guymon. We ended up with a total of six new finds. These were our first caches found in Oklahoma. Yea, another new state for our stats. We stopped at six and headed home because it was getting close to happy hour and it was getting hot. It was only about 93 degrees, but the humidity was up and it was pretty uncomfortable. We drove back to Hooker and settled into the coach for the rest of the night.

Monday, August 22nd, woke up to another muggy morning with a promise of temperatures over 100. We did, indeed, extend our stay and I wrote another check to Alice for $20 for two more nights. We went out after lunch to do some more geocaching in the area. When I say area, in this case, I mean a fairly large area. The caches were concentrated in four different areas which formed an almost perfect square about 16 miles on a side. We ended up driving about 70 miles total for the day to find eleven caches with no DNFs. We did several from one series put out by a local cacher that had a cemetery theme. All of the caches were hidden in local cemeteries, hanging from tree branches so one did not have to poke around near any grave sites. Like many areas in middle America, this area is dotted with small cemeteries. One we went to for a cache was the Lee family cemetery. It was on the corner of a large farm field at the intersection of two dirt roads. It had a sign that said “Lee Cemetery” and about a dozen graves, all of which had Lee in the name on the tombstone. It clearly appeared to be just a part of the family farm set aside for a graveyard. For each of the caches the guy that put out the caches made up a photo for the web page that showed a black and white photo of the cemetery along with some ghosts. Pretty cool pictures.

We also found several caches around an area known as Optima Lake. The lake was built in 1978 by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the water level never reached more than 5 percent of capacity because of extreme drought and evaporation in the area and the pumping of groundwater which decimated the flow of the Beaver River. Today there is no water whatsoever in the “lake” and the locals jokingly refer to it as the “water-free lake.” There was a park here at one time that included approximately 3400 acres of land along with approximately 4300 acres of Federal Wildlife Refuge. There was a campground at one time, along with several boat ramps and other recreation sites. There are paved asphalt roads throughout the park, however, the roads are nearly grown over with grass and weeds since the park has been effectively abandoned. About the only people who come into the area now are vandals out to finish destroying what little infrastructure is left, or geocachers looking for some of the three dozen geocaches hidden in or near the park.

After our geocaching we headed back to the coach for the rest of the evening. The temperature on the car thermometer was at 100 or higher for most of the afternoon, hitting a high of 103. However, because of the stiff breeze, it wasn’t too uncomfortable for caching and we had a good afternoon.

Tuesday, August 23rd, we left the coach at about 11:30 and went into downtown Hooker to have lunch with Don and Wanda. Since we will be leaving Hooker tomorrow this would be our last chance to spend some time with them. We again went to the Soda Fountain, which has really good food. We had a great lunch and a great visit with our friends. After lunch we drove 20 miles Northeast to Liberal, Kansas to take in the sights and do some geocaching. Our first stop was Dorothy’s House and the Seward County Historical Museum. Dorothy’s House is actually an old, authentic early 1900's Kansas farm house. It has been tweaked a little to resemble as much as possible the house shown in the movie. It is also furnished with antique furniture authentic to the era. Next door to the house is a playground for kids, called “The Mutchkin Playground” and a large tin building that contains a diorama type display called the “Land of Oz” which is based on the original movie, Wizard of Oz. The Seward County Historical Museum is in an old Liberal mansion that was donated to the society and then moved from another part of town to the city owned lot. The museum has a lot of very nice displays outlining the history of Southern Kansas. There is also a couple train cars on display next to the museum. They are a steam operated crane and equipment car used back in the early 1900's by the Rock Island Line for track maintenance.

The historical museum is free and we spent about a half hour going through the displays. The tour of the inside of Dorothy’s House and the Land of Oz has a charge and we didn’t bother with that. After touring the museum and taking some pictures of Dorothy’s House we found the geocache that was hidden on one of the train cars.

As we were getting ready to leave Dorothy’s House to head over to the Liberal Air Museum we had a bit of a scare. As I was pulling out of the parking space we heard a horrible, loud screeching sound coming from the front of the Jeep. I looked around the wheels and tried to figure out what it was, but didn’t have much luck. It seemed to be coming from the left front wheel. Any movement of the wheel would start the screeching noise and it seemed key to movement of the wheel. I thought maybe a brake pad had come loose. Jackie had noticed that we passed a Dodge/Jeep dealer on the main street of Liberal, just a couple blocks from the museum, so I headed over there, hoping I wasn’t making something worse. I managed to get the service manager to come out and look at the wheel and listen to the sound. He wasn’t able to come up with anything either, other than to say he thought maybe the brakes were bad. He also told us that he could not get us in today, even to look at the problem. Even after we told him that we were staying 20 miles away and were just visiting the area. Great customer service. He suggested we go down the street to a local garage called “Safety Lane” and maybe they could help us. We drove the additional two blocks and found a small two bay garage. I checked with the guy inside and explained our situation. He said he could get us in to have a look in about a half hour, so we parked the car and waited. It actually took about 15 minutes and his mechanic put the Jeep up on the rack and took off the left front wheel. I walked out there as he was looking around at the brakes. He then took a large screwdriver, pried the brake caliper back just a little and took out a pea sized piece of gravel that had become wedged between the caliper and the wheel. He said, “there’s your problem” and put the wheel back on. No more noise. Great relief. To top it off, when I asked how much, he said, “don’t worry about it.” That’s customer service. I tipped they guy $10 and we were on our way. Anyone who reads this blog and finds themselves in need of mechanical assistance anywhere near Liberal, Kansas, remember The Safety Zone. They made my day.

With the car now once again quiet, we drove over to the Mid-America Air Museum adjacent to the Liberal airport. The museum is in a large hanger that we found out had once been an Beech Aircraft factory. They charge a modest fee that allows you to wander through the dozens of aircraft that they have on display, most of which are inside the hanger and out of the sun and heat. The museum has over 100 aircraft and is supposed to be the fifth largest in the country. The interesting thing about it is that it emphasizes private aviation more so than military. Probably 70 percent of the aircraft are private planes of various vintage, including a couple Beechcraft planes made in the actual hanger in which they are now on display. The museum does have some military planes, notably a pristine F-4U Corsair in Marine paint with VMA-214 numbers. VMA-214 was, and still is, the Marine Corps attack squadron made famous as the Black Sheep. Col. Greg “Pappy” Boyington won the Medal of Honor commanding and flying with the Black Sheep in the Pacific during WW-II. There was also a 70's television show called Baa Baa Blacksheep based on his exploits during the war.

There is also a fully restored North American B-25 Mitchell bomber and a Grumman TBM-3 Avenger dive bomber. Outside on the tarmac are a variety of unrestored more modern military jets, including a nice Chance-Vought F-8B Crusader in Marine Corps paint. This is the same type of aircraft that I worked on in the mid 1960's during my tour with the Marine Corps. We spent over an hour walking through the hanger and admiring the planes. I love air museums. We also learned that back during WW-II this entire airfield, which is now the Liberal Airport, was Liberal Army Airfield and was a B-24 training base. The museum had a big display with dozens of pictures from back when it was a military base. A very interesting place to tour, especially if you have a fondness for airplanes.

Another interesting display was a Beech Bonanza that was restored and painted to look like the plane in which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson died in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959. Fittingly, the display was titled "The Day The Music Died" in tribute to the Don McLean song, "American Pie." The display included a replica 50's soda fountain and other memorabilia from the era. A very nice tribute to a tragic event.

After looking at the planes we did a little more geocaching in Liberal. We found a total of six caches, with two DNFs, before we decided it was too hot. It was well over 100 degrees. About 5:00 we went back to the Liberal Elks Lodge with hopes that the bartender we talked to on Saturday would have found a lodge pin. No such luck. We did enjoy our visit, however, as there was a new, very friendly bartender, and a number of pretty interesting members in the bar. We had a couple of drinks before getting back on the road headed for Hooker again.

We finally got home about 7:00 or so and walked into the coach to find that it was stifling hot, well over 107 degrees. Smokey the cat met us at the door with his tongue hanging out. Turns out the main breaker in the park controlling our power pedestal had tripped. I reset it and got the air conditioners going again, but it was a couple of hours before the temperatures finally came back down to something close to comfortable. We also found that we had been invaded by ants. Actually, a skirmish, since they were only down by the cat’s food, but it was still annoying, especially since it was so hot inside the coach. I got the ant spray out, killed the ones inside and found their entry point, putting an end to their invasion. What a day! Thought we broke the car, thought we killed the cat, and thought we lost the coach to the ants. Yikes. But, everything turned out fine on all fronts and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, August 24th, we packed up the coach and finally left Hooker, Oklahoma, after a great five day visit. Jackie called Don and Wanda one last time to say goodbye as we were driving out of town. We headed Northeast, destination Dodge City, Kansas, about 100 miles away. We stopped just before the Kansas border to top off the fuel tanks since we had noticed that fuel was more expensive in Kansas than it was in Oklahoma. We got into Dodge City about noon and got settled into the Gunsmoke RV Park. After getting set up we decided to just relax the rest of the day and not go anywhere.

We will be here in Dodge City for about three days before moving on through the Kansas prairie, but I thought this would be an excellent place to stop this chapter and get it published. I will put out another chapter in a week or so when we reach Colorado again. Until the next time, remember what Richard Carlson advised in his book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. When you are facing an issue or problem, ask yourself this question: "Will this matter a year from now?" Probably not. See ya’ soon.

Up in the Texas Panhandle

Welcome back to our story readers. Our last episode ended on Friday, August 5th, with our arrival in Amarillo, Texas. We settled into the Oasis RV Resort on the Western edge of Amarillo for a one week stay. The resort is very nice, with great amenities, and it is inexpensive.

Amarillo had it’s start back in the 1880's as a railway junction and shipping and marketing area for cattle ranching in the area. Originally called Oneida, the name was changed to Amarillo, Spanish for “yellow,” a few years later. The name was believed to have come from the windflowers that grow in the area. Gradually the town grew into the primary economic center for the panhandle region of Texas. Today Amarillo has approximately 190,000 population and still relies heavily on the ranching industry. Jackie was very pleased to learn that Amarillo sets at an elevation of 3,600 feet.

We also learned that Amarillo is known as the “Helium capital of the world.” Large stores of helium were discovered along with the discovery of gas and oil deposits in 1918. In 1927 the Federal government bought up the local gas fields that provided the helium and opened a processing plant that was the primary source of the world’s helium until after WW-II. Although the industry is now again in private hands, the area remains a source of helium and the government’s strategic store of helium is located not too far from Amarillo.

Saturday, August 6th, we set out after lunch for our very first caching experience in the State of Texas. The last time we came through Texas was back in 2006, quite some time before we got interested in geocaching. One of our first finds for the day was a virtual cache (no physical cache container) located just a mile or so from our RV park. The cache took us to a fairly well known piece of public art called “Cadillac Ranch.” It was created in 1974 and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. In 1997 the entire work was moved two miles West from the original wheat field to a cow pasture in order to get it further away from the expanding city limits. Both pieces of land belong to the original patron of the work, a wealthy local rancher.

The cars are a couple hundred yards off of the interstate and are accessible from the access road. Not only are people encouraged to come into the field and right up to the cars, graffiti is also encouraged. While we were there several people, including both kids and adults, were climbing around on the cars with spray cans. The grounds around the art work are littered with hundreds of empty spray paint cans and lids. I have seen this work a couple of times in the past from the highway as I was driving by, but this was the first time I ever got up close and personal. A very interesting piece of Americana. Interestingly, our RV park, which is only around the corner, has it’s own version of this type of art. In front of the office is an old class A motorhome, buried in the ground, nose down, just like Cadillac Ranch. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Another piece of public art we visited, drawn there again by a geocache, is a huge modernistic sundial located in front of the Discovery Center in an Amarillo park. It is a stainless steel tripod with a central spire that tops 60 feet in height. Each of the four “arms” of the work are also a time capsule. The piece was installed in 1968 and the time capsules were designated to be opened at 25, 50, 100 and 1,000 year intervals. The first was opened in 1993 and the second will be in 2018. One of the interesting tidbits we discovered is that the 1,000 year capsule holds a bank book with a ten dollar deposit made in 1968. The claim is that it should be worth about one quadrillion dollars in 2968 when the capsule is opened. My guess is that, based on current economic conditions in this country, it should be worth about nine dollars.

All together we garnered a dozen new finds in a few hours of searching, with no new DNFs. After our caching we drove around town for a while, just seeing what Amarillo looked like. We drove down Amarillo Boulevard, which lies at the North edge of town and was an original part of old Route 66, to see if it held any Route 66 memorabilia, but it basically just goes through a crappy part of town and looks like any other big city. We also checked out The Big Texan Steak Ranch, located on the East side of town just off the freeway. We have read a lot about this place and plan to go there for dinner once during our stay. It is supposed to be one of the most famous steak houses in Texas. It certainly looks pretty kitschy. One of it’s big advertising features is a 72 ounce (4.5 pound) steak that is free if you can eat it within one hour. You have to eat all the steak, plus a roll with butter, baked potato, ranch beans, shrimp cocktail, and salad. You have to pay $72.00 in advance and if you complete the challenge you get your money refunded. Those who have successfully consumed the Texas King meal have their names recorded and posted at the restaurant. As of March 15, 2011, over 8,800 people out of about 50,000 have accomplished this feat.

The record for the shortest time needed to finish the entire Texas King meal is held by competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut. He finished the challenge in 8 minutes and 52 seconds, breaking Frank Pastore's 1987 record on his March 24, 2008 visit. The unofficial record is held by a 500-pound Siberian Tiger, who ate the steak in 90 seconds. I believe I will pass on the big boy.

After our caching adventures and exploring we went back to the RV park. I walked over and tried out the hot tub at the recreation center. Although more of a “warm tub,” it was still relaxing and I enjoyed it. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the coach. Although we didn’t get any rain before bed, we did wake up about 1:30 to lightning and thunder and a brief spate of heavy rain. About 2:30 I woke up to the sound of a distant siren that sounded much like a tornado warning. There didn’t seem to be any storms left around, and the weather radio hadn’t gone off, but I got up anyway and checked the weather radar on the internet. Nope, no storms, no tornados and no warnings. I guess the siren shorted out. After about a half hour it finally went off. I feel sorry for those who were close to where ever it was located.

Sunday, August 7th, we decided that today would be a stay at home day. We stayed around the coach all day, playing on computers, watching TV and enjoying the relaxation. I did a few chores, including starting on scanning the last couple of photo albums from my mom and dad. I have been working on this project for a couple of years and am finally down to the last two albums my dad had. Once they are scanned everything will go on DVDs and be distributed to the family for their viewing pleasure.

Monday the friendly neighborhood weather bureau said it was going to be hot, as if it hasn’t been since we got here. Nonetheless, we decided to not go geocaching but to complete some chores instead. Today, the 8th of August, would have been my mom’s 85th birthday. Happy Birthday mom. After lunch we drove into town to do our laundry. After laundry we went to the local Walmart for provisions. The weather guy was right, it was HOT. The car thermometer said 108 at one point, and later on the local news they said the “official” high for the day was 105. Inside the laundry, which did not have working A/C, it was stifling. After our chores we went home and hid inside the air conditioned coach for the rest of the day and night. I though we left the desert to get out of this kind of heat.

Tuesday, August 9th, we went out after lunch for some more geocaching. The weather said it was “only” going to be 97, so we decided to take advantage of the cooling trend. Actually, it wasn’t too bad as long as you didn’t stand in the direct sun too long. There was a little breeze and it was very dry, so the heat wasn’t unbearable. We managed to get a dozen caches in about three hours of searching. We also topped the 2,700 finds mark. Yea! Several of the caches took us into the alleys of the residential areas in Amarillo. The descriptions even called them “alley caches” and named them as a type. We are not too used to alleys, as they are not used much in the Coachella Valley. Even in Phoenix, where I grew up, they are only in the very old neighborhoods. None of the new tract home areas have alleys.

After our caching we went to the mall and walked around for about 90 minutes, getting some exercise and doing some window shopping. A little before 5:00 I glanced outside and noticed that it was getting very black and nasty looking in the West, the direction our RV park was, so I told Jackie it was time to go home. We got home before the storm hit, but within the hour we had severe thunderstorm warnings going off on the weather radio, thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. At one point we pulled the slides on the coach in to protect the topper awnings because the weather radio was calling for 70 mph winds with the storm cell that was tracking towards us. We got maybe 35 or 40 mph winds, lots of rain for about 30 minutes, and then everything cleared up. We put the slides back out and chilled the rest of the night.

Wednesday, August 10th, we hung around the coach until mid afternoon when we went into town for a movie. On the way we stopped and picked up one geocache that we had passed over a few days before because we weren’t sure of the general location. I did a little more research and narrowed down the area and we found it pretty quickly. For our movie choice we went to see “Cowboys and Aliens” even though it had not received the best of reviews. I like action movies, I like alien movies, I like Harrison Ford. I am somewhat ambivalent about cowboy movies, but have enjoyed some. Not the best movie we have ever seen, but enjoyable and entertaining, which is what I go to movies for; to be entertained. This was sort of Indiana Jones meets predator meets True Grit. A lot of critics panned the premise of aliens visiting in 1875, but in my estimation, if an alien civilization is a million years advanced from ours, what difference does it make to them to come in 1875 or 1975? Probably the oddest part of the movie was that the aliens captured earthlings by lassoing them from flying machines. No “beam me up Scotty” for these guys, it was strictly “git along little doggy.”

After the movie we went to the Big Texan Steak Ranch for dinner. I really wanted to get a nice “slab o’cow” at a Texas steakhouse and this one had the best advertising. The inside was pretty neat with an arcade and gift shop in the lobby to keep folks busy while waiting for a table. We were seated right away and had a very nice balcony seat overlooking the main dining room. For a Wednesday night they were pretty busy, but the wait staff was efficient and we had our food quickly. I had a T-bone that was cooked perfectly and very tasty. Jackie had a rib eye and she asked for it charred rare, a difficult request that has disappointed more often than not. In this case it was perfect, black and crispy outside, rare inside. Unfortunately, while we were there they had no takers for the 72 ounce free meal offer. There is an elevated stage with six seats right in the middle of the restaurant and overhead are six digital timers. That is where they put the contestants. We hoped to see someone try today, but no joy. The meals were great, the service good, the steaks excellent and the drinks a little over priced. If you go, drink beer, its way cheaper than cocktails. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, August 11th, we had planned to go out for some more geocaching today because the weather called for somewhat cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, it was cooler because it was cloudy and rainy most of the day. It started a little before five in the morning when a pretty good thunderstorm rolled through the area. Who has thunderstorms at five a.m.? In Phoenix, where I grew up, thunderstorms were mostly a summer thing and almost always afternoon and evening. When it cooled off in the early morning hours the storms faded away. Here we didn’t have any more real storms for the rest of the day, just mostly cloudy with drizzly rain on and off. That makes caching hard because the hiding places are wet and yucky.

I did go up to the office in the morning and extend our stay here in Amarillo for another week. At dinner last night we were discussing our plans, or more precisely, lack thereof, and decided that we really didn’t have much to do between now and September 2nd when our first reservation in Colorado come around. There are a couple places we want to see, Dodge City for instances, but for the most part we have about 700 miles to travel and three weeks to do it. Anyway, the discussion ended with us deciding that there was plenty to do here in Amarillo, it was inexpensive and comfortable, and we decided to stay. Since the park is about two thirds empty, staying another week was not a problem for the park.

Other than a visit to the hot tub in the afternoon, I spent most of the day on the computer just messing around playing games. Jackie never left the coach. Although we wanted to go caching, we did enjoy our “down” day.

Friday, August 12th, we left the park after lunch for some geocaching. When we left the park the sky was completely clear of clouds, so it had promise of being a hot day. We cached for a couple of hours and got seven new caches, along with a couple of DNFs, our first for the Amarillo area. At that point we decided that we were getting overheated. In the two hours we had been caching there had been quite a buildup of clouds and it was humid as well as hot. Since we were fairly close, we decided to visit the Amarillo Moose Lodge. The lodge is located on a county road North of the city limits by about two miles and is a little bit of a ramshackle building. When we were going in we noticed that they had a swimming pool and spa in the back of the building, but neither had water in them.

We got into the lodge about 30 minutes after they opened and there were about six people already at the bar, along with the bartender. The air conditioning in the building wasn’t working particularly well either. The bartender, Paige, looked at our card and then introduced to everyone else at the bar. That is a nice touch that we have only experienced a couple of times before in Elks lodges. The lodge also bought our first drink, another nice, welcoming touch. The group was very friendly and chatty with a number of the people, including the Lodge Governor (head guy of the moose order), came over and introduced themselves. The bartender told us that the pool had some plumbing problems and there appeared to be no immediate plan to fix it. We had another drink and talked to folks for about an hour before deciding to leave about 4:00.

I will give the place credit for being friendly, but a little run down. Pretty cheap drinks, about $2 each, so I can see why the bar was busy in the early afternoon. Shortly after we arrived Jackie got up to use the restroom and went to the door in the bar that showed it was a unisex handicap bathroom. She pulled open the unlocked door and there was an old guy standing in the middle of the room, in the dark, buttoning, or unbuttoning, his pants. Jackie wasn’t sure, she just closed the door and came back to the bar. She said when she opened the door there was an unreal stench that wafted out and punched her in the face. After about five minutes the bartender asked one of the other patrons to “go check on Joe” in the bathroom, make sure he’s OK. I got the impression Joe was very old and had issues. A guy looked in and said he was OK. By this time we noticed at least the light was on. About five minutes after that Joe came out and told the bartender he was leaving. Since he still had half a beer on the bar she asked if he was all right. He said he was, but he was sick, something he ate. That sort of pulled the whole episode together nicely. Bad burrito syndrome.

After visiting the Moose we decided to hit up a different Elks Lodge. I had checked and the closest one to Amarillo, which we visited on our first night here, was the Hereford Lodge, which was located about 40 miles Southwest of Amarillo. We headed down there and arrived in Hereford, which touts itself as the “beef capital of the world.” It has a population of just over 15,000 people and lots and lots of cows. There were feed lots all around the town. We did three more geocaches in Hereford, so we could get our ten finds for the day. We then went over to the Hereford Elks Lodge. The lodge was in a nice little building at the South edge of town and when we rang the buzzer the door was opened by a four year old boy. Hmmm. Turns out the Exalted Ruler is a relatively young guy and his wife is the Secretary of the Lodge. They were there with their two young kids. The ER was in the bar and we talked with him a little, finding out that the lodge had less than 200 members. That is barely hanging on for a lodge. It had a nice little bar, with a bartender who just started and appeared to have not tended bar before. In fact, she didn’t look old enough to even be in the bar, much less behind it. We did have a couple of drinks and in the hour we were there no one else came in the bar except for the officers that were there when we got there, and they weren’t drinking.

The lodge had a very nice, small but nicely appointed, lodge room off of the bar. There was one mystery however. When we came up to the lodge and parked there were about ten cars or so in the parking lot. While we were in the place we only saw about five different people besides the kids, which made us wonder a little bit. When we left the place there had to be three dozen cars in the lot. We did notice when we walked in the main hallway a door marked bingo hall, but all the time we were in there no one said a word about what was going on, bingo tonight, dinner tonight, nothing. Unless the lodge doubles as a train station, there were a bunch of people in there somewhere, doing something, but we don’t know what. The ER was nice enough, but not very talkative. He would answer a direct question in a quiet Texas kind of voice, but never volunteered a thing. Odd. We did a new lodge pin for our banner and had a couple of drinks.

After the lodge visit we headed back home watching the storms building up all around us. We drove through a couple of light sprinkles, and hit some patches of road that showed rain had been there not too long before us, but we never really got heavy rain. Since it was after 7:00 by the time we got back to the area of the RV park, we just drove another couple miles into town to what we called restaurant row, a mile or so of restaurants on either side of I-40. We settled on Red Robin and went in for dinner. They have a new prime rib dip on the menu that I tried and it was wonderful. Been a while since we tried the chain, but I sure liked my sandwich. Jackie’s burger was OK, nothing to shout about, but not bad either. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the night. Never did get any rain at the RV park.

Saturday, August 13th, we took a drive after lunch to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, about 35 miles Southeast of Amarillo. Palo Duro Canyon is described by various sources as the second largest canyon in the United States, after the Grand Canyon. This honorific, however, is based on the size of the canyon in square miles, not depth. It is roughly 120 miles long and has an average width of about 6 miles, but reaches a width of 20 miles at places. Its depth is around 800 feet but in some locations it can increase up to nearly 1000 feet. This is compared to the Grand Canyon, which is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep. Palo Duro Canyon has been named "The Grand Canyon of Texas," both for its size and for the dramatic geological features, including the multicolored layers of rock and steep mesa walls similar to those in the Grand Canyon.

While the depth certainly doesn’t approach that of the Grand Canyon, it is still pretty impressive given the fact that when you drive around this area, even for long distances, it looks flat as a table top. As we approached the entrance to the park you could all of a sudden see this big, colorful hole in the ground. It was very pretty, and unlike the Grand Canyon, the road system in this canyon drops right down into the canyon bottom, so you are looking up at the walls, not down. We were very impressed with the campgrounds that the State of Texas has put in this park. There are several hundred very nice, large, flat sites with 50 amp electric and water at the sites. They also have several dump stations in the park and another camping area with about 35 30 amp camp sites. While we were driving around the place we saw very few campers, I would guess about 20 percent of the sites were occupied. I guess that would be because it was so hot, but with electric you would have A/C if you had any kind of camping trailer or motor home.

We also stopped at the visitors center which was a nice stone building built right on the edge of the canyon. The building was built back during the depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as were many of the roads in the park. We spent a couple hours exploring the park, looking at the scenery and checking out the amenities. We will keep this place in mind for future trips through the area. We also found a couple of geocaches in the park and then did a few more after leaving the park. All together we had five finds for the afternoon. On the way out of the park we spotted a deer just hanging out with a bunch of cows, eating their food. After our tour we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night. Another day and night with no rain.

Sunday, August 14th, we left the park after lunch for some more Amarillo geocaching. We targeted some geocaches located right in the downtown area of Amarillo for today. Geocaching in urban areas, especially the downtown parts of cities, is much easier on weekends because most government and big business entities are closed. Amarillo was no exception, there was almost no traffic, auto or foot, in the downtown core. After we exhausted the downtown caches we expanded out to the surrounding residential areas. We managed to get a total of ten finds for the day, but we stacked up four new DNFs in the process. I don’t feel too bad about the DNFs because I noticed when I downloaded cache information from the website that caches seem to go missing here quite a bit, so it may be that we couldn’t find them because they weren’t there anymore. Could be the weather, could be that they don’t hide them real well. Several of the caches we have found over the last week have been very much out in the open. Makes you wonder how they stay without being muggled.

Two of the caches we found were virtual caches, both in the downtown area. One was a very pretty granite monument in a plaza next to the civic center. It was a four foot diameter black granite ball, inscribed as a world globe, that was setting in a base with water between the two. The polishing was so precise that the ball, which reportedly weighs over 3,000 pounds, can be turned with just a push of a hand. Pretty cool. The other virtual was a restored steam locomotive on display near the old rail station. It was a big, Baldwin steamer that was in use on the local railways until 1953. I can just barely remember as a young kid in Milwaukee when railroads were finishing the transition from steam engines to diesel electrics.

After caching we took a little drive to Thompson Park, on the North edge of Amarillo, just to see what it looked like. This is the largest city park in town and includes a couple small lakes, picnic areas, a disc golf course, the Amarillo Zoo, and the Wonderland Amusement Park. The total park is about 610 acres in size and was named for Ernest O. Thompson, a local WW-I hero and one of the original organizers of the American Legion military fraternal organization. There appeared to be thousands of people enjoying the park on a Sunday as we drove around, including some very large gatherings. Whoever owns the bouncy house business in Amarillo was happy because there were at least seven or eight in use in the park at various parties. Wonderland Park appeared interesting as it looked like a couple steps up from what you see set up at big state fairs, with a couple of big steel roller coasters thrown in for good measure. The place was first called Kiddie Land and initially opened in 1951 with three children's rides and a ticket booth made from a large box. After adding additional attractions during subsequent years, the owners changed the name of the park to Wonderland, inspired by Alice in Wonderland. According to their advertising the park now has 26 rides and hosts more than 200,000 annual visitors.

After our touring we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night. We will be here in Amarillo for another couple days, but it has been ten days since the last time we published, so I decided that this was a good closing point for this chapter. We will be back with another episode in a week or so. Until the next time, remember that “Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.” (Aldous Huxley) Find what makes you happy!

New Mexico Redux

Hello again loyal readers, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter concluded when we left the great state of Colorado and arrived in Bloomfield, New Mexico, on Thursday, July 28th. We had a great ten days in Southwest Colorado, and will going back to the State again in September, this time to the “front range” of Colorado.

We settled into the Desert Rose RV Resort in Bloomfield after a fairly short 50 mile or so trip from Durango. After lunch we did our laundry at the park’s very nice laundry facility. After that we just stayed in for the rest of the day.

Friday, July 29th, we headed out after lunch for some local geocaching. Although we had stayed in Farmington, New Mexico, just 25 miles West, for a few days a couple weeks ago, we had not come this far East for caching, so we had quite a few to choose from. We managed to get nine finds in a couple of hours, with two DNFs tossed in for good measure. Bloomfield is a small town, about 7,000 population, and is pretty much a crossroads community. It lies at the intersection of the two primary highways in Northwest New Mexico, US 550 which goes North/South and US 64 which goes East/West. A lot of the local jobs are also in support of the oil and gas industry, as is Farmington.

Saturday, July 30th we set out early, about 9:00, from Bloomfield, driving South on US 550 for Sante Fe again. The drive was about 190 miles, but Highway 550 is a major artery in this area and is a four lane highway all the way from Bloomfield to where it ends at I-25 North of Albuquerque. The road is also fairly level without a lot of up and down grades to worry about. We were headed back to the Sante Fe Skies RV park, where we were earlier in the month when we stopped at Sante Fe. The reason we are headed back to the same place so soon is that our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen are also headed to the same park. They have been in Denver, visiting their daughter, and we set up our travels to meet them in Sante Fe. They are coming down I-25 from Denver and have over twice as far to travel, over 400 miles, but they should still get in by mid afternoon.

We arrived at the park at about 1:30 and got settled into a nice spot. Barry and Colleen arrived about 3:30 and parked in the site right next door. We had a great reunion, we had last seen them in Camp Verde, Arizona back in June. They came over for cocktails and we then fixed dinner for all of us. They are traveling with their six year old granddaughter, Zoe, and have had her with them for about three weeks. Jackie fixed an chicken enchilada dish and Barry brought over some of his wedding soup, both of which were wonderful. The girls played a couple of games of Skipbo while Barry and I just talked. They left about 9:00 because it had been a long day for Barry.

Sunday, July 31st, we all got into our Jeep to spend some time exploring Sante Fe. We left the coach about 11:30 and went to a Mexican Restaurant in Sante Fe called PC’s. This place had been recommended to us by a guy we met at the FOP Lodge when we were here earlier in the month. We didn’t get a chance to go then, but suggested it to Barry and Colleen for today. We found a very clean, very busy restaurant with a great menu. The food was excellent. Even Barry, who is a bit of a picky eater who doesn’t usually eat a lot, cleaned his plate. I would recommend PC’s to anyone visiting the area. It is on Airport Road, a block or so West of Cerrillos, which is the main road through Sante Fe.

After lunch we drove up to Old Sante Fe to do some tourist wandering. They were having a huge art festival in the Old Plaza and had a lot of the roads closed. We finally got a parking place and walked into the Plaza area. We looked at some of the art booths, but found that 90 percent of the stuff was religious art, Catholic icons, crucifixes, that sort of stuff. We spent about an hour walking around, looking at different shops and stuff. We then got back in the car and headed to Walmart for some shopping. Barry and Colleen needed some provisions. After shopping we went back to the coaches.

Barry, Colleen and Zoe came over to our coach and Colleen and Jackie played cards while Barry and I went in the back to sing some karaoke and drink. Zoe watched cartoons on the TV. Barry and I had a wonderful time singing, as we always do when we are together. About 8:00 we heated up the leftovers from the night before for snacks. None of us were real hungry after the big lunch, but we did nibble a little at the leftovers. About 9:00 the Cohen’s left to go to bed. They are leaving in the morning, heading back towards their home in Indio, California. Barry is going to stop in Flagstaff for the night, but it is still a 350 mile drive from Sante Fe to Flagstaff. Then he has another 350 miles from Flagstaff to Indio. I don’t envy his having to be back to work on Wednesday and having to make all these long hauls. A long day for us is 200 miles.

Monday, August 1st, happy August and day before the big USA default! Barry and Colleen were packed up and out by 9:00 and we were up to say goodbye. After we had lunch we drove the 45 miles back to the North part of Albuquerque to do some shopping at Costco and a Walmart supercenter. We also made a quick stop at Sam’s Club since it was close by. We needed to get some supplies that might not be available for a few weeks as we wander the prairies.

After our shopping trip we drove to the Rio Rancho Elks Lodge. Rio Rancho is a suburb of Albuquerque, to the Northwest of the city. We had never been to this lodge before. They have a nice lodge building close to the center of town. We noticed coming in that the Intel company, the one’s that make a lot of the chips for your computer, has a huge plant in Rio Rancho. The campus appears to be about a mile long along the main street of town. Must be a big employer for the area.

The Rio Rancho lodge was very friendly and we chatted with the bartender and a couple of other members for over an hour. We visited their casino, but didn’t win anything. Poop! We had a couple of drinks and the lodge bought us one as well. We also got their lodge pin to put on our banner. Yea! After the lodge visit we headed back home after a quick stop at a Papa Murphy’s pizza place to pick up a take and bake pizza. We went home, made our pizza and had a nice evening.

Tuesday, August 2nd, default day, except that I woke up to the news reporting a compromise that was going to pass both the house and senate and be signed into law today. Wow, who would have guessed that they would come to an agreement at the last minute. (Hint: Just about everyone.) We packed up the coach and left the Sante Fe Skies RV park about 9:30 for a 170 mile drive Southeast to Tucumcari, New Mexico. We arrived in Tucumcari about 1:00 and were greeted by triple digit temps. Yikes. It was 102 when I was setting up the coach. We decided that it was a long drive and too hot to go out to explore, so we just stayed in the rest of the day. We are in the Kiva RV park, which is affiliated with one of our membership groups, Adventure Camping Network (ACN). This gives us camping at discount rates. We called ACN while we were on the way to Tucumcari and made a reservation for three nights at $20 a night, which is pretty good. Their normal rate for a 50 amp full hookup pull through site is close to $30, plus taxes. Although the place looks pretty rustic from the street, when we got back to the sites they were nice level gravel sites with cable and free internet to boot. Much better than what we had in Farmington.

What would eventually become Tucumcari was created as Douglas Camp, a railroad construction camp built by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1901 as it pushed the line West. Because there were so many gunfights at the camp, it was nicknamed “Six Shooter Siding.” Like many of the railroad camps, settlers gradually moved into the area and in 1908 the town was founded and renamed Tucumcari. The name comes from the nearby Tucumcari Mountain, which was named by early explorers in the region. Tucumcari is a rough derivation of the Comanche word for “lookout.” The town is also one of the many small towns which laid along the route of old U.S. 66, and main street still has many of the old, colorful neon signs and a couple of the famous “shape buildings,” which popped up along Route 66 over the years. There is a Mexican restaurant in the shape of a sombrero and a curio shop shaped like a huge Tee Pee.

Wednesday, August 3rd, we awoke to humidity! Now I know there are some of you who would say, why mention that? I grew up in the desert and lived in desert areas almost all of my life. Humid for me is 10 percent. This morning it was super sticky, everything you touched felt damp and sticky. We did have some pretty testy thunderstorms roll through last night. None of them lasted too long, nor were they serious cells, but lots of lightning and thunder (which I enjoy and Jackie hates) and hard rain for ten minutes while the cell goes over. It was enough to leave the ground wet, which means humidity this morning.

After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in Tucumcari. We were last here in 2006, which was before we started caching, so this is virgin territory for us. I was surprised that there were several dozen caches in town and geocaching was even listed on the town’s sheet of “things to do” that was provided by the RV park. We did seven caches in a couple of hours, along with two we were unable to find. One of the caches we went to, actually one of our DNFs, was named Six Shooter Siding, and was supposed to be located very near the original camp site where the town started. While we were caching we noticed that the town appears to be slowly dying, with dozens of abandoned stores, buildings and houses, all around the center of town. It is a very sad looking little town.

About 3:30 we decided it was getting too hot, it was in the high nineties and humid, so we went to the Tucumcari Elks Lodge. This lodge has RV sites in the lot behind the building and we had stayed here for two nights back in September of 2006. We had originally planned on staying at the lodge on this trip too, but decided that with the extreme heat we needed 50 amp service so we could run both air conditioners, and the lodge only has 30 amp.

There were several people in the bar, but only one said hi and the bartender was a little slow to warm up to us also. We had a cocktail and spent a few bucks each in the casino. Again, no luck with the Elks slot machines. Oh well, a donation to a good cause. We found that this lodge has about 450 members, which is pretty good for a town of only a little over 5,000 population. We also picked up a lodge pin. We had one from 2006, and they still had the same pin, however, they also had their centennial in 2009 and they had a new pin made for that, so we got the newer pin for our banner.

After a cocktail at the lodge we drove around town for a little bit, just sightseeing, fueled up the Jeep and then headed back to the coach for the night. About 7:00 or so the monsoon thunderstorms started up again and went on for about two hours, just like the night before. Lots of light and noise, a little rain and wind, and then a quiet night.

Thursday, August 4th, another sticky morning. After lunch we went out to do some more caching. Although it was just as hot as yesterday we seemed to have an easier afternoon of it. We managed to get an even dozen new finds with no DNFs. One of the caches took us to an antique store and we spent about a half hour wandering around looking at the stuff in the store. After we were done caching we stopped at the Tee Pee curio shop, the one with the front shaped like a tee pee, and then headed back to the coach about 3:30 to get into the A/C again.

Friday, August 5th we were up and out of the RV park by about 9:30 for a day of travel to Amarillo, Texas, about 100 miles East on I-40. We made a stop for fuel before leaving Tucumcari because diesel is about a nickle cheaper in New Mexico than it is in Texas. Once we cleared New Mexico, about 60 miles West of Amarillo, it was clear that we had made the prairie. There wasn’t a mountain anywhere in sight. It took us a couple hours to get to the Oasis RV Resort, about five miles West of Amarillo on I-40. This is a very nice RV park with all 50 amp full hookup sites, perfectly level concrete pads and patios, nice streets, nice clubhouse and amenities, including cable and internet. The best part is the rate for a full week was $120. That’s just a few cents over $17 a day. The park is a little stark, there is no grass or trees, but when we were coming down the road everything for a hundred miles around is brown and dead because of the drought. Grass would probably just be dead and ugly anyway. It was hot, 99 degrees by 1:00 when I started getting setup, so I didn’t do much outside except put up the shade screens.

While we were on our way between Tucumcari and Amarillo Jackie got a phone call from some friends of ours back in Indio, Pat and Monte Montes, asking us if we were going to be in Amarillo tonight. It turns out that Pat and Monte were also traveling in their motorhome on the way to Michigan and were going to be overnighting in Amarillo! Pat and Monte were members of the Indio Elks travel club, the Desert Drifters, and we have known them well for years. We were excited to be able to cross paths with friends.

After we got settled in Jackie and Pat talked again and we made plans to meet at the Amarillo Elks Lodge about 6:00 for dinner. They are staying on the East side of town, we are on the West, but he Lodge is about in the middle. We agreed and decided that we needed to leave the coach around 5:30 or so to be sure we got to the lodge on time. About 4:30 I turned on what I thought would be the local news on local television (off the antenna, not the satellite) and found the network’s national news show on. I immediately checked the internet for time zone information, looked at my phone, and realized, oh oh, when we came into Texas we went into the central time zone. It wasn’t 4:30, it was 5:30! I told Jackie and she went into high gear and miraculously, we were ready to go by ten to six and made the Elks Lodge only ten minutes late! Yea us!

We had a great time catching up with Pat and Monte over some cocktails and then dinner. The lodge had a pretty good dinner menu, that they serve five nights a week. Jackie had a nice steak and I had the shrimp dinner. We finally decided it was time to head for home about 9:00, the latest we have been out of the coach in a long time. We were really happy to have the chance to cross paths with Pat and Monte. They are leaving in the morning for their next stop, Oklahoma City. We told them to be sure and try to make time to see the OK City memorial where the Federal building was blown up back in 1995. We had been there back in 2006 and were very moved.

When we left the lodge we found that it had rained a little bit while were in having dinner, but it had quit and the temperature had dropped into the 70's, very nice out. We drove home in the dark, a rare event, and spent the rest of the night in the coach (after changing all the clocks!).

Our arrival in beautiful Amarillo, Texas for a week stay will mark the end of this chapter of our travels. I will post again in a week or so as we wander the prairie. We will be here for a week, then head up into Oklahoma and Kansas. Until we meet again, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” (Henry David Thoreau) See ya soon!