Oklahoma City to Amarillo

Looong day of driving today
We admittedly started later than intended. And I didn’t even dry my hair..

Started off making our way from the hotel back to the route which wasn’t too tricky for once. Oklahoma City itself seems quite nice and it’s a shame we didn’t have more time to explore.

After passing through Yukon (home of Garth Brooks no less) our first stop for a quick photo in El Reno- mainly because it had a massive Route 66 sign.

The next section of 66 is great- 1933 concrete for miles and miles. Really nice scenery and ‘pony’ bridges.

We stopped in Weatherford for Stafford Air and Space museum. Apparently Oklahoma has produced a lot of astronauts. General Stafford was one of them and he decided to make a museum. The first bit is about him self which is fair enough I suppose. He had an interesting life - naval college to USAF to NASA where he was on Apollo 9. The one before the moon landing.
The museum also has a lot of exhibits charting the age of flight from the Wright brothers to modern space flight.

Next back on 66. Easy driving but kept swapping from one side of the interstate to the other which got a bit tiring. I was very excited to take over the driving from Elk City and got to take us over the state line into Texas. Got a photo of it’s rather inauspicious sign but I was excited nonetheless.

Texas 66 continued on with a stretch that had 75 mile p/hr speed limit which was nice! We’ve been fairly careful with speed but with so many stretches without traffic it’s tempting to push it a bit :)

We got a bit confused and ended up on the interstate for a bit but decided it was ok cos we needed to make up time and we were driving right next to 66 anyway. Quick stop in Shamrock at the ‘U drop Inn’ (Art Deco inn and gas station) and then on through McLean. Another quick stop at Groom for the ‘leaning tower’ in the additional pictures. Apparently it was built like that deliberately?!

As we came into Amarillo it was getting late and we were hungry so we stopped at the Big Texan restaurant for steak. It was awesome. I’ve heard it described as a tourist trap but hey, we’re tourists and as we’re in Texas it’s not exactly going to be that inauthentic. It has a massive gift shop and loads of other curious things and statues for Rich to pose with. The steak was great and it wasn’t that expensive.

Off to find the hotel which is a My Place. Not stayed in one before but it has a little kitchen and a full sized fridge, microwave, cooker etc. So we can make breakfast yay.
The freezer has an ice maker but so far we have not been able to get it to make ice.

We now have a tiny bit of extra time due to the horse riding being cancelled but need to be careful as we have nearly 300 miles to drive tomorrow into New Mexico. The rain has also started but thing we will escape it tomorrow. Time for sleep!

State #5 Texas
Hotel# 8 My place Amarillo
Road kill count: 1 armadillo, 1 raccoon thing, 5/6 critters. All redeemed by witnessing a man step in the road to save a tortoise :)