Road Trip (2)

We left the trailor park in Mishawaka on March 4, 2001...
Drove thru Springfield, Illinois(Springfield Springfield it's a helluvah town...this would the annoying start to me 'singing' songs with the names of the towns or cities we drove thru). First cool site was The Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. It was just past dusk and getting pretty dark and it was closed, but we saw The Arch. It was WAY bigger than I'd ever thought it would be even after seeing it in pictures. Pictures don't do the real thing any justice.
Off to Oklahoma...been up 24 hours...It was a beautiful sunny morning when we got to Oklahoma...Song: OOOOOOklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain...They have the coolest state sign in all of the U.S. that we saw. Sounds so not important, but we stopped to take a picture by it. It was a big concrete sign with landscaping around it. Jenna likes it so much, she left a momento there...should I say what she left? Hell, who cares now, she left her underwear by the sign. We laughed so hard. We were thinking ok, we're OUT WEST, we'll see cowboys and windmills at least right?! Um, best cowboys we saw were on the post card I bought and the cover of my Tim McGraw CD's. The best windmill we saw was really tall but was missing most of it's paddles, what a let down. Ha. But we still took a picture of it. Had to. Oklahoma also had weird road signs. The one we thought was like WHAT? was Do Not Drive Into Smoke. We are Hoosiers, we don't know what that means, but we never saw any smoke to not drive into, so we're good. My personal fave was Hitchhikers May Be Escaped Inmates. Excuse me, but isn't it a time in the world where you just don't pick up ANY hitchhikers, just sayin! Man this is a close 2nd fave because it seems so obvious but it said Don't Drive On The Median. What? Route 66 is in Oklahoma? Route 66 museum, hell yes. We even drove 23 miles to see a big stupid blue whale. A fake one, not a real one if you are confused. Ha Ha Ha. Just so you know if you ever drive on Route 66, it's very scenic, a little lame and it literally dead ends in the middle of nowhere. Literally nowhere. We had to get off it a little before it just ended at a gas station and figure out what road to then take to keep um driving west. Kinda funny really. Route 66 just dead ends.
So. We found some road to drive on to Texas...All my Ex's live in Texas, The size of TX deep inside,Amarillo by Mornin...do you know how many songs have Texas in them? alot, trust me. We drove thru Amarillo. You'd think the picture songs paint of Amarillo that it'd be cool. Amarillo was scary. It was One Huge Cheesy Hilly to da Billy Dump of a place. For real. Dump.
In case you are wondering, we haven't slept yet. We did stop to take a PTA at least once by now though, so we don't stink:) If you are unsure of what a PTA is, think long and hard about it, you'll figure it out.
Yeah, we found a really nice windmill with all it's paddles too. Looked like a picture out of an old west movie, really cool. Jenna was super excited. Jenna, do you see that? Yes. What is it? I don't know, let's go see. It's the Biggest Cross in the United States. We had to take picutures, of course, we knew Granny would have loved to see it.
We didn't actually STOP and sleep and stay in a hotel until Gallop, New Mexico. Why? Not sure. I think we were just having too much fun feeling the freedom of having no where to go.
We'd stop when we wanted to 'see' something or have to pee or eat (again) or fill up with more gas...little honda prelude was pretty good on gas thank goodness...it never felt cramped in that car either, which is weird, cuz it's small...felt cramped after the WHOLE TRIP was actually OVER, but that would be like 3weeks from now...anywho....it's only March 6th now and we're in New Mexico...
Gallup, New Mexico was so pretty. At night we saw all the little adobe Pueblo Indian Reservation 'homes' lit up on the side of the 'mountains'. Super cool. Jenna finally was driving when we hit New Mexico...she was so tired at one point, she yelled "Kendra I need your help, my eyeballs are like stuck!". We still laugh about this. We slept forever in that hotel too, finally got up to leave and we were eating pizza for 'breakfast' at 2:00pm. What is it about this trip that I crave pizza? ha ha ha I swear every time we needed food, we both wanted pizza. Some gas stations had the best pizza and Pizza Hut is everywhere. oh almost forgot my song...just so happens to be Tim...Albuquerque...waitin outta blizzard. We just drove through the ginormous city of Albuquerque in the middle of the night towards Gallup. It seemed to be a nice city if I remember right, but really all I remember was it was like HUGE and Glowing with lights. Before this trip, I didn't know how to spell Albuquerque either, now I do.
Anywho(I say anywho alot forgive me)I wanted to at least see ONE cactus, you know, like a perfect guy with a hat on cactus...not even one in all of the Painted Desert. Ok, I'm sure there's at least one, but not from where we could see from the road and any of our stops. New Mexico is FLAT. Pretty, but flat...with big rock figures out in the distance. Don't wanna call them mountains, cuz they were way smaller than any mountains. I think it was about this point in our trip that we said, ok we can't just drive until we wanna die of sleep, we have to sleep AT NIGHT and drive during the DAY. Ha. I find it funny how we had to have an actual talk about this, like it never even crossed our minds before this...Arizona, here was come, after we sleep.

(...to be cont...)