Amarillo by Morning

Day One of Spring Break 2022

Westbound and Down

For spring break this year Trever voted that we head west. We were only taking a few days so we decided to go to Amarillo, Texas. His family lived in the Panhandle area of Texas and western Oklahoma during the 1980s and he has fond memories of the area. I found us a tiny house on VRBO for four nights and we planned to leave Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. However, after a series of sad events and stressful days, we decided to simply take off Friday evening and get the bulk of the driving out of the way.

The Stick. When the hatch will not stay open, you must use the stick.

After a harried day of running errands, getting the Durango ready, school, work, and packing, we got on the road right before five and amazingly, got going and underway with no major drama. We quite often have our first disagreement before we even get out of the driveway. 🙂

It was a slow start as we had to stop about 30 minutes later in Morrilton to grab a bite to eat and then find a Dollar General in order to procure black masking tape. Why, you may ask? Our windshield has a loose seal and it sounds like a million buzzing bees once you get over about 50 miles an hour. Two fast food joints and a crude but effective duct tape procedure later, we were on our way again.

I-40 west isn’t exactly a novel stretch of road for us so there was nothing much to see as we drove onward toward dusk. But what had been a cloudy and dreary day and evening ended with an amazing sunset. The orange-red ball descending on the horizon took full advantage of the remaining cloud cover and the resulting sky was breathtaking. Pictures do not do it justice.

Making it all the way to Amarillo was ambitious with such a late start so we planned to stop around Elk City – Trever spent his high school years in nearby Erick and he wanted to drive around town the next day. While trying to make reservations with my hotel points, I found that there wasn’t a vacancy in the hotel we needed there so we decided on slightly closer Weatherford, Oklahoma and pulled into the parking lot of the La Quinta just before midnight.

Had to bring Kate along for my Lenten time

After checking in and schlepping upstairs with entirely too much luggage for a less than 8 hour stay, we took a few minutes to unwind and get ready for bed. We had had a long drive, a long day, and quite honestly, a long few weeks so we settled in to rest before the last leg of our journey.

Karri Temple Brackett
March 18, 2022

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