The alarm on my watch rang at 6:00 the next morning and we all, to varying degrees, got up and began to get ready for our next day of traveling. The goal was to be off by 8 and we actually did a pretty good job of doing so that morning. I was impressed by how our battery operated air blower could be reversed to draw the air out of the mattresses to make that process quicker. It was also easier to take the tent down then to put it up (why is that). After breakfast, I loading up the Kia and we were off again! I mentioned in the "planning stages" that one of my goals was to do our LDS Temple scavenger hunt. Besides being the first stop on our journey, Albuquerque was also home to the first temple on our list. Since it was Saturday, I expected the parking lot to be full of patrons, but when we arrived, we found the gate open but the lot empty--the temple was closed for its six month cleaning. Still, we were able to take our pictures and take our time walking around the building.
Two views of the Albuquerque, New Mexico Temple
We also have a tradition we have done since the boys were little where they and I get our picture taken touching the temple, but the picture at this temple shows us working really hard not to squint in the morning sun--the results are . . . less than satisfying. I'll wait until later to add one of those. :) From here, we started on our 8 hour drive to the next temple on our list: the Oklahoma City Temple.
The day before, crossing the Colorado River into Arizona, showed a sharp contrast in scenery from the desert to the mountainous elevation of Williams and Flagstaff and back to the desert again. The western and central portions of New Mexico also showed a nice contrast in scenery that was enjoyable and made the drive easier. In fact, at some point either right before leaving Arizona or not long after entering NM, I saw a line of buttes that made me wonder if they had been the inspiration for the Cadillac buttes in the movie Cars.
As we drove into the eastern portion of NM, the terrain began to flatten. Then we reached the panhandle of Texas. I had been to Texas before when I was 18 (the last vacation I was a part of with my family before leaving on my mission). I admit that I spent a lot of time on that trip in the back of RV either reading or talking or sleeping and not paying much attention to the landscape. I have nothing against Texas (although I find it funny that every time we have visited Yellowstone, I always end up behind a very slow moving car with a Texas license plate), but I have to say that the panhandle of Texas was the most boring portion of our trip scenery wise. It was unceasingly flat (no hills, no contrast, no nothing) and dry. I've also always heard that "everything is big in Texas." I have to admit this was true, but maybe not in the way the phrase was intended. At one point, we passed a cattle ranch with several hundred head of cattle all penned into a very concentrated area. I had the air conditioning blowing. As we passed that point, the smell of cow that slammed into us was bigger than anything I've every smelled before (worse than the dairy farm). *Yikes!*
After gassing up in Amarillo and grabbing our snacks, we drove about 50 to 80 miles more and came upon a huge cross next to a "mega-church" pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. The cross had to be at least four-stories high, but I had to wonder where the parishioners would come from. Maybe there was a town nearby; I don't remember seeing it. To break the monotony we played a game where we tell a story with each person choosing one word to move the narrative forward. We did this a few other times along the way, but the first story (about a baby who stops his Uncle Hugh from exacting revenge upon his boss, a ringmaster, by slobbering in the poison concocted to kill the boss and is rewarded with a silver elephant; Hugh escapes on a camel and, in a effort to repent, coverts to Judaism) was the best.
As we drove into the eastern portion of NM, the terrain began to flatten. Then we reached the panhandle of Texas. I had been to Texas before when I was 18 (the last vacation I was a part of with my family before leaving on my mission). I admit that I spent a lot of time on that trip in the back of RV either reading or talking or sleeping and not paying much attention to the landscape. I have nothing against Texas (although I find it funny that every time we have visited Yellowstone, I always end up behind a very slow moving car with a Texas license plate), but I have to say that the panhandle of Texas was the most boring portion of our trip scenery wise. It was unceasingly flat (no hills, no contrast, no nothing) and dry. I've also always heard that "everything is big in Texas." I have to admit this was true, but maybe not in the way the phrase was intended. At one point, we passed a cattle ranch with several hundred head of cattle all penned into a very concentrated area. I had the air conditioning blowing. As we passed that point, the smell of cow that slammed into us was bigger than anything I've every smelled before (worse than the dairy farm). *Yikes!*
After gassing up in Amarillo and grabbing our snacks, we drove about 50 to 80 miles more and came upon a huge cross next to a "mega-church" pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. The cross had to be at least four-stories high, but I had to wonder where the parishioners would come from. Maybe there was a town nearby; I don't remember seeing it. To break the monotony we played a game where we tell a story with each person choosing one word to move the narrative forward. We did this a few other times along the way, but the first story (about a baby who stops his Uncle Hugh from exacting revenge upon his boss, a ringmaster, by slobbering in the poison concocted to kill the boss and is rewarded with a silver elephant; Hugh escapes on a camel and, in a effort to repent, coverts to Judaism) was the best.
We finally left Texas and entered Oklahoma. Honestly, I was expecting more of the same as far as the scenery was concerned, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Oklahoma, at least this portion of it, had very green, rolling hills. The drive became a lot more pleasant and I enjoyed looking out the windshield again. As we approached Oklahoma City (by the way, we just found out that a member of our ward has been called to serve his mission there), I began looking for signs of the recent tornadoes that had devastated the area. Knowing that we would be traveling through this way, I had been paying very close attention to the weather and the news in the days leading up to our vacation after the tornadoes tore through the areas around Oklahoma City. I knew that the second one had blown across the I-40. Remembering the movie Twister, I found myself searching for the "path" the tornado may have left behind.
The temple is actually located in Yukon, a suburb of the city. It may be that we left the interstate before reaching what I was looking for (or it may be that movies don't imitate life--gasp, did I really say that), but while I did see blown out signs, ripped up billboards, and tree limbs in places where they normally wouldn't be, there was not much to indicate that a major tornado had been in the area only two weeks before. The Oklahoma City Temple is a smaller temple located next to a Stake Center. We arrived around 5 o'clock and were surprised to find it devoid of patrons as well--apparently sessions end earlier in the afternoon on Saturday. We took our pictures, walked around, and prepared to move on to Tulsa for our date with Steak 'n Shake.
The temple is actually located in Yukon, a suburb of the city. It may be that we left the interstate before reaching what I was looking for (or it may be that movies don't imitate life--gasp, did I really say that), but while I did see blown out signs, ripped up billboards, and tree limbs in places where they normally wouldn't be, there was not much to indicate that a major tornado had been in the area only two weeks before. The Oklahoma City Temple is a smaller temple located next to a Stake Center. We arrived around 5 o'clock and were surprised to find it devoid of patrons as well--apparently sessions end earlier in the afternoon on Saturday. We took our pictures, walked around, and prepared to move on to Tulsa for our date with Steak 'n Shake.
A view of the front of the Oklahoma City Temple.
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Here the boys and I keep with our "touching the temple" tradition.
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Jennifer was also taking pictures on her iPod for a slide show she wanted to put together of places we visited. I had to take a picture of her taking a picture of herself.
Having seen our two temples for the day, it was time to eat. We were all quite hungry. As I mentioned previously, the Steak 'n Shake franchise is building two of its first locations in California in our area, so we had to try it out to see if this was a good thing or not. In planning the itinerary, I found there were a couple of places in Oklahoma City that we could have gone to, but since the temple was outside the city and backtracking would not have forwarded our progress, I decided to drive another hour and a half to Tulsa. We arrived with very hearty appetites. Steak 'n Shake turned out to be a sit-down restaurant (although it appears there is a drive-thru). We were happy to find the food reasonably priced and very good. The "steak" part of the name has to do with steak burgers. There is a difference in preparation, but steak burgers are different from hamburgers. The variety of burgers was quite large. We all had different kinds and we each liked our choices (Isaac, as is his custom, made sure we were all enjoying our food). The shakes were delicious. I had a tropical banana shake that reminded me of the banana shakes Dad would make when we had over-ripe bananas and vanilla ice cream in the house--to me, that was the sign of an excellent shake.
Ben & Isaac wanted to make sure their first experience at Steak n Shake was well documented (they also took video to mark the occasion).
After satisfying our taste buds and tummies, we still had another hour and a half to go to get to Joplin, Missouri, our next KOA destination. I made my biggest driving error of the trip as we left Tulsa. To rent a GPS from Avis would have been an extra $30 and my thinking is, why deal with some disembodied, electronic woman's voice when I can print maps off the computer (which is where the GPS gets its stuff as well) and listen to my wife's voice instead. As we left Tulsa, she told me where I was to go, but I must have been distracted at the crucial moment and ended up taking a road headed in the direction of Arkansas rather than Missouri. I suppose this would have been the point where the GPS woman would have said, "Hey, stupid, you're going the wrong way!" But none of us knew of my error until about 20 miles later when the junction we saw had nothing to do with where we were supposed to be going. Luckily, a guy at the counter of a gas station took pity on my poor lost soul and instead of sending us back to Tulsa, told me to go back 7 miles and take a state road that would connect us back with the I-40. Jennifer had called the KOA earlier to let them know we were coming. At the time, we were told it was raining. When we arrived at around 11, the storm had thankfully passed through. We were able to put our tent together, make our trips to the bathroom and crash on our air mattresses sometime around midnight.
Dad's banana shakes are the BEST!
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