Honeymoon Day 2 - Nixa, MO to Walsenburg, CO (12 November, 2005)

We set out at around 8:00 a.m. for Walsenburg, Colorado. 815 miles away. We were making very good time all the way to Amarillo, TX where we turned north to Dumas, TX and then over to I-25 to head North to Colorado.

In case your map is a tiny little back-of-the-matchbook size, the United States is frickin' huge! It takes a long time to drive across it, and you have to do things to keep your mind active or you face a very real danger - driving comas. Your mind can just shut off and you'll drive and drive without really knowing where you are or where you're going.

Fortunately, we had Laura's sanity and Mark's dimentia to work with. We spent over an hour trying to come up with all the names of states so we could hunt down license plates. It shouldn't be too difficult, but it really is...we had to remember all of them and then put them in alphabetical order (ok - we didn't have to do that, but if you want to cross them off the list you need to be able to find them in that list).

The first day we got over half of them...including Massachussetts (thank you, Big Texan!).

In case you ever decide to pass the time this way, the trick to license plate hunts (yes - there IS a trick) is to focus on 18-wheelers...they frequently have two different license plates on them - one on the trailer and one on the cab.

Stopping off at the Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo was a very interesting experience. We got there at approximately 4:30pm which was just on the front edge of their busy time. Big Texan Steakhouse = Big Thing in the parking lot, and there's now a huge steer in our collection of 'big things'.



The rest of the drive to Walsenburg was uneventful, and the glowing sign of the Anchor Motel welcomed us almost as much as the queen-size bedbowl in our room.

I feared for Laura's well-being as we went to bed...I flopped down on my side, and she almost went flying through the air scraping her head on the popcorn ceiling.