Day 2...belatedly

Day  2 began before dawn in Indiana. I woke up early, hoping to push past Tulsa and make some killer time, making the last two days of my trip easier.

It worked.  I stopped for ice, for my creative coolering, and at Waffle House for lunch before leaving Missouri. I have had a short but passionate affair with Waffle Houses. Colleen made noise about how great they were back in March before Sean and I visited Eric for the first time, and the Eric, Sean and I hit one in Mechanicsville before we headed back to New Jersey. I was hooked, forever and ever, and Colleen and I have made it our business to find them in our travels, as have I each time I’ve been to Virginia.

 I hit Tulsa around 1 pm, after the time change at St. Louis, and there was no way I was stopping then. I set my sights on Amarillo, Texas. Google told me it would take 5 hours. It took 3 hours and 45 minutes. No I didn’t speed THAT much. But I did manage over 900 miles today after managing over 800 yesterday.

One note on Day 1: I-70 in West Virginia is a lot like I-95 in Delaware. I liked it for that.

Things I saw today:

1.       A Midwest sunrise. Beautiful. It was neat to see the sky ringed all the way around with pink and orange and purple as the orange and pink in my rearview mirror intensified and the sun exploded over the plains. Well done, Midwest.

2.       The Muddy Mississippi

3.       The Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium.

4.       St. Louis kind of smells like ribs. Just saying.

5.       Watching the topography change in Missouri from plains to the Ozarks and back to plains as I entered Oklahoma.

6.       The plains of Oklahoma

7.       Road kill armadillos everywhere! And those things splatter!

8.       The vistas of the gullies and ravines and washes in the Texas Panhandle. Stunning

9.       A town with 2 water towers, one that said HOT and one that said COLD

10.   A flatbed with a new McDonald’s sign on it.

11.   More tow trucks towing tow trucks.

12.   A burned out husk of a car.

13.   Signs for the steakhouse I hit in Amarillo starting in Oklahoma.

Song of the day: Sweet Annie (The Zac Brown Band)

Meal of the Day: Toss up.  I had a killer prime rib with fried okra (for you, Colleen) and a baked potato at a steakhouse in Amarillo. Best part of the steakhouse? Also a brewery, so I tried their Rattlesnake IPA (really, really good. On par with the Ickys) and also a pale ale with my steak. Hard to beat. However, this morning I took a biscuit from the continental breakfast at the Days Inn I slept in last night. It was hard as a rock, so I Ben’s Ladder Listed* it in Indiana before the sun came up.

Tomorrow: Original plan was Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now hoping for Flagstaff, Arizona.

*One of the redshirt summer staff on the Walpole Island Workcamp was our Tool Guy, Ben. When youth groups check in, often times they will give ladders to the Tool Guy for crews to use during the week. The week before Walpole Island, Ben had eighty-some-odd ladders to account for…and his list got sucked out the window one day while he was driving. So that’s now a verb meaning accidently (on purpose) losing things out of windows.