On the Road Again.........Headed to Santa Fe

It has been a couple of interesting weeks??? Several days??? Whatever……….

In the early morning hours of 26 June, Frog Hollow Farm was subjected to a lightening strike.  It was pretty exciting; the first evidence was that the security system alarm went off, and went off and went off. We finally had to disconnect both the main power supply and the battery power supply to get the blasted alarm to be silent. Over the next several days, we determined that the bolt out of the blue also killed 4 TV sets and a freezer in the garage (but we didn’t know that at the time……..it took several days for that to become apparent.). It also seemed to impact one of my computers, but I’m not sure what happened there. More will be determined.

On June 28, I got my hearing aids………...a gift from a grateful government. I won’t say they have changed my life, but they’ve made Kate a lot happier…..she was really tired of repeating when I said, “Hu?” I like them a lot.

Fast forward to 4th of July weekend……..that’s when Kate discovered that the freezer in the garage wasn’t freezing……..it was defrosting!  We called several dealers in our area, and the only one who had an appropriate freezer didn’t have any delivery people………...and we had a whole bunch of meat and shellfish thawing in the busted freezer…...so, I hooked up my little trailer, and drove to an appliance dealer where we loaded the replacement freezer onto the trailer….have I mentioned that I hate towing a trailer? It will follow me anywhere if I pull it, but when backing up is involved, it has a mind of its own. No matter what I do, no matter which way I turn the wheel, the blasted trailer does just what it wants to. But we got home with the freezer and it is currently being happy in the garage. That was on Sunday, when we had expected to be on the road headed to Santa Fe; that didn’t happen.

We did finally get off on Monday, and traveled to a small-town motel south of St. Louis, near O’Fallon, IL. It wasn’t a happy stay there: Kate (Who had made the reservation, I was quick to remind her.) found the room too small and ill-designed. Breakfast was pretty bad, too. The truth is that Kate had selected the place because it was less expensive than most motels in the area...so had most of the tattooed, badly-dressed and generally disheveled folk at breakfast .

The motel was clearly operated at the cheapest level possible. The room we were in was very small, too small for the furniture in it. The four-cup coffee maker came with a couple of one-cup packets. The air conditioner didn’t function properly, but did leak all over the floor. The water-saver thingy in the bathroom lavatory and shower fixtures made sure you had to run around under the spray to get wet, and the Internet connection was completely inadequate.

Yesterday (Tuesday,  July 7th) was not much of an improvement. We drove in the rain all day traveling to Tulsa. The high point of the day was our lunch in Cuba, MO. The town proudly proclaims its history as a Route 66 city, currently a Route 66 Mural City (the capital letters are theirs.). We drove around the little town a good bit because our Garman navigator seemed somewhat confused, but finally found and chose a BBQ joint that was pretty good, and kinda fun. It was called Missouri Hick Barbecue….although they did overdo the cornpone hillbilly aspect. But the BBQ was good. Check it out at http://www.missourihick.com/

We still had a long way to go after lunch, and drove on through the rain to Tulsa, OK. The place Kate had chosen, yet another Choice Hotels place, ‘cause that’s what we use, seemed to be fine, but the woman working the desk appeared to have been working there no more than a day or two, and was overwhelmed by some problems with room assignments. It took us the best part of a half hour to get registered and to get the key cards in our hands. Then, when we got to the room, the TV didn’t work right, the clicker wouldn’t do its job, and Kate was very unhappy. Ultimately, she talked to the manager, who suggested a room change, but she refused that and we watched CNN and nothing but CNN until bedtime. Kate went to bed early; I played on the Internet.

Wednesday, July 8th, opened to more promise. We got off on time and enjoyed excellent highways and reasonable driving conditions, although we did power through several showers. We stopped for lunch at a place we found on/in the book that Jennifer gave to us, "Road Food". We had lunch at "Johnny's Grill" in El Reno, Oklahoma, where we had the onion burger.......it was very good. We're going to try those at home.

The Onion Burger

Nearby Chicken Joint

El Reno is one of those little towns that is trying to hold on to the past by boosting, or boasting, its Route 66 heritage............observe.......

Interestingly enough, the President will visit El Reno on Thursday, 16 July, when he speaks at the Federal prison there. See President@Prison.

After we’d entered Texas, we left the interstate and drove west toward the dying town of Panhandle, Texas. The little town is the site of the “Square House Museum”, which has a lot of really boring history……...I don’t recommend it.

We reached Amarillo before 5 PM, and felt pretty good about it. Dinner will be “Cup O’Nodlle” again, but that’s OK. It’s good to be off the road.

The next day was mostly featureless New Mexico. We did enjoy a stop at the Silver Moon Cafe, one of our long-time stops on the trip to Santa Fe. The place has been there since 1950 or so, and is still hanging on, despite the fact that Santa Rosa is fading away.

The food is mediocre, but the atmosphere is authentic. Old cowboys in big hats eat there.