Two Miles and Four Feet from Home: Amarillo bound!

We had another great nights sleep as it cooled off down to 72. It was a bit noisy as we were right in the middle of a cricket colony so we had to adjust to the constant sounds of nature. All in all we woke up ready for the day. Today we would be heading for Amarillio. This town was only about 4 hours away and would leave us a about 6 more hours to get to the the Great Sand Dunes National Park on the following day. We took showers and packed up and were on our way about 8 am. Not bad considering we still do not have our camping rhythm down pat yet. We had a pretty uneventful ride and just watched the scenery go by. We eventually made it into Texas and stopped at a very cool rest stop that had great picnic tables, playgrounds and an awesome view of the vast Texas plains. Some say that everything is bigger in Texas and on this day I would have to agree. It was too early to each lunch so after taking it all in we headed back out for Amarillo. We arrived at the campground around 12:30 and after setting up camp had a our usual lunch and then decided what to do with the rest of the day. It was about 93 degrees so hanging around the campsite did not seem like the best option that we had so we did what all great campers do …..we headed to Wal-mart! We actually needed some supplies and we also knew it would be a great way to beat some of the heat. We took turns going in while the other one stayed in the car with Jasper. After we finished we drove around town to take a quick look around and then headed back to camp. It had cooled off a bit and was now only 87 with a 10 mph breeze. I actually went to the pool while Lyn sat with Jasper at camp.

One of the things I liked about this campground is they put us in with small campers and tent campers. Sometimes we get mixed in with the big rigs and they do not seem to be out and and about as much. On the campsite next to us were a couple from Quebec that were traveling on two motorcycles and pulling one trailer. The were camping in a pretty large camper and like us were on a 6 week journey touring the USA. On the other side of them was a couple that had just rented a super nice teardrop camper and were actually getting ready to spend their first night in it. He is actually going to build one in the future but his wife wanted to make sure she liked it before he went to the trouble of building it. After hanging out a while we decided to go see the Cadillac Farm! It is an iconic piece of “art” where the artist took 10 Cadillac's and buried them halfway into the ground so that the other half is sticking straight up. According to our GPS it was only 17 minutes away so we decided to go take a look. From what I had read people came from all over and spray painted the cars and took pictures of all the cars in their glory. We arrived and it was kind of a crazy scene. Lots of cars parked along one of I-40’s many frontage roads and everybody heading through a corn field to get a closer look at these cars. We parked near the gate and grabbed Jasper and headed towards this iconic scene. As we got closer we saw people of all ages and all types spray painting and taking pictures of every thing including the cars and the ground surrounding the cars. Some just took pictures and one guy was even operating his drone as he flew it around the cars capturing video. I really do not have the words to describe the scene but I will say I am so glad that we went. After taking our pictures we went back to the campsite and got ready for dinner. As we arrived the skies to the west started to get darker and you could see that we were likely to get some heavy rains. Lyn continued cooking dinner as I ran around putting things up and trying to get things to stop blowing away. After about 30 minutes of this one of the KOA guys came around and warned everyone that if it got really bad that we should all go into the bathrooms as that was the safest place to be with one of these kind of storms. It really looked like we were about to be hit and then all of a sudden the sun to the northwest came out and apparently the storm went just to the south of us and we got not even a drop of rain. After all the excitement we went to bed around 9:30 and called it a night. The temperatures dropped and we drifted off to sleep to the sounds of nature ...and the occasional train horn ha ha. Tomorrow we head out to the Great Sand Dunes NP. Excited for sure!