Blog

for so long it’s not true.

Here we are at the Days Inn in Shawnee, Oklahoma for the night. Faithful readers will know that we often stay at Comfort Inn, but there was none here, so we had to pick an alternative.

We picked a restaurant for dinner from TomTom, hoping to find a local steak house (seemed appropriate), or at least one that wasn’t a familiar chain (Texas Road House is pretty common out here), and we ended up at the Santa Fe Cattle Company which turns out to be a chain, but a more regional one. It was very like Texas Road House, though, with the whole peanut thing, the same kind of rolls, etc. Dinner was pretty good, even if two of the kids’ dinners were chicken fingers and grilled cheese.

We’ve made it into Oklahoma, where we stopped at the first exit and had a picnic lunch. The visitor center was very nice and modern, with clean restrooms. The weather had cleared up almost completely, so the picnic was very enjoyable. The kids played in the grass

and even got to feed some horses over the fence in the back, before taking a picture by the sign.

We just passed by the “Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere.”

We are passing through the small panhandle of Texas, having spent the night in the small town of Vega in our favored Comfort Inn. The morning weather today is rainy, but they seem to be glad for it in Texas. Amarillo is the only big city we will pass through en route.

One of the places on our list of places to stop has long been the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Having a snake of our own (Bobbi, our Ball Python), has fascinated us, and what better way to learn more about snakes than a visit to the Rattlesnake Museum.

Most of the snakes there were indeed different varieties of rattlers, but there were others, like this tank of Ball Pythons

as well as other reptiles, scorpions, tarantulas, etc. I wish I had written down the names, but here are a sampling of rattlers:

We made it to one of the more strangely spelled stops on our way home. We hit Old Town Albuquerque (a quaint part of town stuck in a bit of a time warp) a little before lunch, and stopped in the Visitors’ Center for some ideas of what to do while we were there. We had been planning on either the Rattlesnake Museum, the Atomic Museum, or both, but learned that the Atomic Museum had moved. They had other suggestions, but we decided on the Rattlesnake Museum,

and then lunch at La Hacienda, a local Mexican restaurant and souvenir shop.

By then, it was really time to hit the road again in order to make Texas before bedtime, but we stopped to take a picture in front of an old Catholic Church that seemed to have some Southwestern style.

and as we were packing the car up to go, we heard a Native American performing some ceremonial dance in the little square by the Visitors’ Center, so we went to have a peek.

The Best Western is hosting us tonight in Gallup, New Mexico. We stopped at our customary Comfort Inn, but were thwarted by the out of commission pool.

The drive out here today from Flagstaff was an interesting one. It started with our attempt to visit Slide Rock, then continued up I-17 to I-40. We took a bit of a detour to visit Petrified Forest National Park,

but as we drove down the road we were heading straight for a thunder storm. Our entire visit to this park was peppered with episodes of rain, heavy rain, and thunder and lightning. Very exciting, but also limiting for getting out of the car. We did manage to get out a couple of times, and did I mention the wind? The wind was very strong throughout our driving day today.

At the end of the park, we hit the Visitor’s Center

where the kids were able to do another workbook and earn another badge.