I mentioned in last night’s post that we camped out in the Walmart parking lot. It worked out really well. The lot was quiet all night long and aside from the generator running out of fuel at 3:30 in the morning, we didn’t have any hiccups. It actually was cool enough in Wichita Falls last night to just open the windows and get a cross breeze going, but I was a bit nervous about having all our windows open with only a screen in between us and a visitor so I didn’t run with that setup for long. We were able to hit the road by around 7:30 or so. After stopping in to our host store for supplies, we made our way to Amarillo to see Aunt Diana for lunch.

Diana is lucky enough to work right next door to the best Mexican restaurant in town. Being able to just walk next door for enchiladas or chiles rellenos wouldn’t be good for my waistline; I understood why Miss P90X just ordered one taco and a glass of water. Diana also gave us the low down on the Cadillac Ranch and suggested we pick up a can of spray paint before we went. After a much needed haircut for Will, we trucked over to the outskirts of town to visit the Cadillac Ranch. There were at least 20 kids there along with ours, all armed with cans of spray paint. I was pretty nervous about the whole enterprise, but it was hilarious to see the kids painting over each other’s names before the paint had any chance of drying. I would love to see a time lapse of just one of those cars over the course of a day or two. Many, many coats of paint are sloppily added each day I’m sure.

Tucumcari was a lot of fun. The Dinosaur Museum run by the local community college was a real treat. You can actually earn your AA in either geology or paleontology there, which definitely made me jealous. The kids are planning to post more about the dino museum, so I’ll just say that we were definitely impressed with the museum. They partnered with the fine arts department at their school to create bronze castings of many of the dino skeletons and now have the largest collection of dinosaur bronzes anywhere in the world. A real treat and definitely worth the visit. In the gift shop, they were selling non-museum quality fossils as a scholarship fundraiser, so I picked up a really cool fish fossil and a trilobite fossil that’s incredibly detailed. They were only $6 each and will make great additions to my office decor.

We made it to Edgewood and the old homesite around 10:30 our time. It’s definitely nice to be able to plug in the camper and not have to rely on the generator. I can’t wait to show the kids my old stomping ground in the daylight! Although just from what I’ve seen so far, the whole place has changed tremendously. There are houses all over the place!

Gas Mileage Log

Tank 3 – 10 mpg