In the last post, I mentioned the Indian trading post of sorts that was near the welcome center. I was surprised that with the number of people at the welcome station, that there were not more people here. I think I later learned why. Reba had been wanting to buy some kind of Indian Jewelry since we were in Indian country. Although we didn't go inside this establishment, all of the others seemed to have very expensive merchandise, more than one would want to spend at a roadside stand. I don't want to say I didn't  trust them but...

A couple more from Arizona.

As we entered Arizona, we stopped at  an Official Welcome Center that was located next to an Indian Trading post of sorts. It was in a very scenic area. The structures looked out of place with all of the rock formations. There will be some pictures of those to follow.

For some reason for which I am not quite sure, I really didn't take many photos in New Mexico. I think maybe we were just trying to get to our destination by evening and wanted to make sure that we didn't waste too much time. We had hoped to get to Albuquerque to spend the night the evening before but when we stopped at a rest area entering NM, we found out that there was an international balloon festival going on there. Apparently, rooms were going to be very difficult to find so we stopped instead at a town called Santa Rosa for the night. We actually stayed in a Motel 6 on Route 66. I still kick myself for not getting some kind of a Rt 66 shot. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get another chance next trip out. Anyway, that put us a little behind the next morning with an extra 100 miles or so to go. This picture was taken at a "Scenic View" area on I-40.

What would a trip through Texas be without pictures of longhorn steer?

Found near the bottom of the Palo Duro Canyon by a spot that appeared to be a theater area. It was closed on the day were there.

One nice thing about the Palo Duro Canyon State Park is that in approximately 3 hours, you can drive to the bottom and back up with plenty of time to stop and take photos.

We stopped at a welcome center near Amarillo, Texas to get a map and ask about interesting things to see. We were told about Palo Duro Canyon State Park, home of the second biggest canyon in the US. I'm sure you can guess the biggest. It was about 25 miles off of the interstate so we decided to take a little side trip. It had stopped raining but was still very overcast and dreary. I would like to return there one day to see what it would look like in the sunshine,

This is not something you see at a lot of Florida rest areas. This was taken in Texas. Signs like this were common there and in states like New Mexico and Arizona.

May as well get this thing going... As said in a post the other day, most of the first two days were a waste photo wise since we were watching our time on day 1 and we awoke to rainy nasty weather on day 2.  It stayed rainy and cloudy all day but it did at least quit raining finally. We pulled off the interstate in a little town called Shamrock, Texas and decided to explore a little. We ended up on some dirt roads through farmland where we ran into (not literally) some cows grazing near the road. When I stopped, the black one came over to the fence to pose..

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I don't know why I didn't start posting during the trip until yesterday. I gues because I couldn't post photos and forgot that this is also a place for me to just write stuff.  We stayed in Little Rock, Arkansas last night. What an adventure. We had upstairs neighbors that were making a tremendous amount of noise up through about 1 am. They finally quieted down until around 4 when they got really loud. It sounded like some kids running all over the place and people stomping or falling on the floor. It eventually moved into the parking lot. When I looked out of the window, I saw a guy banging on the driver's window of a car with someone (I guess his wife/girlfriend) inside. After much screaming and yelling, he opened the door as the driver backed out of the space and drove off. I thought the guy was going to get dragged along but he let go. The driver left quickly and the guy walked across the street to a park. It was mostly quiet the rest of the night but in the morning when we left, I didn't see the car and the guy was sitting in the park. I'm guessing there may have been some alcohol involved somewhere. Needless to say, we did not get a lot of sleep.

We had a nice day on the road anyway. We went to Nashville via Memphis and ended up somewhere between Chattanooga and Atlanta before we ran out of energy. We're hoping for a quiet uneventful night.

I haven't posted any pics here for a while. I have still been taking a few but just haven't felt like putting anything up. This is going to be changing in the very near future. Reba and I are just finishing up a trip out west to see our son get married. We decided to take a little extra time and drive out. We enjoy road trips and travel well together so we thought it would be fun. We were right. The first couple of days, the weather was not very good and we had to make sure we got there in time so the cameras pretty much stayed in the bag. It started clearing up while we were in Texas so we visited a canyon near Amarillo that is the second largest canyon in the country. We also had the opportunity to visit the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon with a few other miscellaneous spots. I ended up taking somewhere around 1000 photos. It is going to take a while to get through all of them but I think this will give some material for this blog for quite a while. Check back soon for the first installment. I hope you enjoy them.