Day 1

9/3/08 - Elk City, OK We left home "early" this morning--twice. The first time at 7:08 AM. After returning to the house to get Kevin's sunglasses (which he had left on the trunk of his car), we left the second time at around 7:20 AM. Our first stop was to top off the gas tank before we hit interstate (36.744 gallons @ $3.579/gal = $131.51). We had a nice drive on I-40; very light traffic through New Mexico. We stopped at a rest station about 20 miles from the Texas state line to enjoy breakfast burritos that Tara made. Bacon and Kevin froze on their potty walk (well, it was Bacon's potty walk, Kevin was just along for the walk); very chilly day. Just east of Amarillo was our first fill-up (39.693 gallons @ $3.589/gal = $142.46). Our first fun stop in Texas was just west of Amarillo to see the Cadillac Ranch. We didn't bring spray paint, so we didn't get to take part in the wildly popular graphitti-fest on the cars--this is apparently legal and adds significant artistic value to the attraction. More on the Ranch can be found on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Ranch)

We traveled a little further south-east to get to our next cultural enrichment excerise--Huge Pair of Legs. We came close to not finding them, however. The driving

instructions provided by our map software were so detailed (we're talking they get down to describing the cars that you will be on the road with you) that we "misread" them and took a detour into a small farming community. Well, the Legs were, well, legs (& feet). You look, you snap a picture, then you try to figure out how to make a U-turn with a 32' RV towing a Saturn in order to get back to the Interstate without taking any more adventures through unknown territory. We will have to research the history on this particular "curiosity" and get back to you. We did notice that the socks have been enhanced by the addition of "nail polish" to the toes (unfortunatly, you can't see that in the picture). Update 9/5/08: Here is the story...http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1242

After leaving the Legs, we made our Groom, TX to see the Groom Cross. This was an awesome sight to see. It stands 190 feet just south of I-40. There are several sculptures there depicting Christ's path to the cross as well as other representations from the Bible. You can see it was overcast, but what you can't feel is the chilly wind that went along with the cloudy skies. :) If you want to read more about it, you can visit their website at http://www.crossministries.net/

We ate a quick lunch in the parking lot here while we looked over the plan for the rest of the day. It was here that a minor flaw was found in Kevin's well-thought-out plan. Our mapping software failed to account for the time change going from the Mountain to Central time zone; this combined with the fact that our scheduled stopping point couldn't be reached before 8pm led us to alter plans for our first night.

The beauty of RVing is that you can change plans at will. We were orginally going to stay in Hinton, OK, but moved that in by about 50 miles to Elk City, OK. The KOA there was a nice campground in a quiet part of OK. There was a field behind the KOA that was full of corn; the picture below would make for a nice Windows desktop. :) We didn't really spend much time setting up as we were both tired from the long day.

Ultimately we ended up traveling 476.9 miles today. It was a long--but good--day on the road. Tomorrow...Memphis, TN.