Drive from Texas

July 7-9
Prior to leaving I searched the weather apps and found that we could go any direction we wanted. There were clear skies everywhere. I also looked for every location of Red Lobster, Skippers, and Long John Silver's I could find along our proposed routes. No luck except if we wanted to stop in Denver. I find it very strange that fish restaurants are mostly gone.

Day 1: Italy TX to Raton NM
We left before the crack of dawn so that we could get through Dallas before traffic really hit. Once we were north of that tangle of traffic we stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's and were carefully watched by a greedy gang of grackles.

We did not stop at the best donut shop ever in Wichita Falls, and the gift shops we used to visit on 287 are now out of business. So it was all about drive and drive and drive. We did find a really cool new one and of course I didn't write down either its the name or location. Ah well, I know it's on 287 somewhere in west Texas.

Day 2: Raton NM to Rock Springs WY
Raton is a lovely town, could be fun to spend a weekend. The morning drive was lovely. We went took the toll road around Denver and stopped at a couple of shops in Fort Collins to stretch our legs. I will admit to looking for western themed items to go with the new bedroom décor I was planning. No real luck but it was still nice to get out and move.

We were about 10 miles outside of Rock Springs when we drove through this huge dust cloud. Shortly after that my car had a panic attack. It had all the bells and whistles going off telling me to pull over. Flashing lights and warning notes on the screens and argh. Traffic was super heavy and the freeway was packed because of construction. I eventually pulled over. Shanna had pulled out the manuals and was reading. I figured I was driving a computer so the thing to do was restart. I restarted and we still had warnings but not as many. The car thought it was having a heart attack from what we could tell.

I made the executive decision to get back on the road and drive the remaining 5 miles to Rock Springs. After all, the check engine light was flashing, not solid. The car wasn't driving any differently than normal and there were no weird sounds. We managed to get back on the freeway and into Rock Springs where we checked into our motel and called the dealer.

They said to call back in the morning when their expert was there, but that I might want to take it through a car wash. WTF? I called my dealer back home and they said it might be the air filter. The manual was no help at all. We decided to drive it to a restaurant. Of course the Applebee's was now out of business but a local Mexican place was pretty good. When we got back in the car the lights and warnings were still on though the alarms had stopped.

We stopped to put gas in the car, got back in and everything was fine. WTF part 2.

My drama queen vehicle

Day 3: Rock Springs to Pocatello
We got up late since the dealer didn't open early. Called in and got the 'too busy but if you show up you might be fitted in' answer. Called my Pocatello dealer. They told me to go to any car parts store. These stores have the magic device that can read the codes and tell what is really wrong.

YAY that worked. The air filter was icky. Probably from driving through that big dust cloud. I would have bought a new one but they didn't have it in stock so we knocked the dirt off and put it back in. Problem solved. The car clearly had a panic attack. We headed for home. No more car problems.

In Kemmerer we stopped to check out another rock shop In Stone Fossils: https://instonefossils.com/.

A little side story... I love the books by Patricia C. Wrede where she reimagined the world and made magic part of it. Unfortunately she made the Americas devoid of native populations in order to make it a wild and magic place (there be dragons). I love the books despite this because of the humor and the characters it is set in the late 1800s/early 1900s Book 1: Thirteenth Child, Book 2: Across the Great Barrier, and Book 3: The Far West. We listened to these books while we were driving in the car. One of the books lists some of the wildlife beyond the great barrier. This list included a wooly rhinoceros. I had never heard of this creature till I read the books. I looked it up and they really did exist. I'm so bummed that like the wooly mammoth we no longer have them on the planet.

So when we stopped at the fossil store and there was a complete wooly rhinoceros skeleton I could hardly contain my glee.

 

Using Shanna for scale

 

My new fossil (Knightia eocaena) from this shop

 

Super cool to find these rock shops in Kemmerer. We finished our drive to Pocatello noticing the darkening of the skies. It would be strange to have it be mist or fog with such hot weather. *sigh* It was smoke. What we later learned and experienced is that smoke from the huge fires in California were drifting all over the west.

Glad to be home. - Jenny

Texas Summer Visit

June 28 - July 6
Yes of course we went birding. See the July posts on BlueRaven https://blueravenbirders.com/2021/07/. But we also hung out with family.

Nan's cat lurking up high

We finally did it. Went to a Buccees. Shanna's online friends insisted that since they couldn't go she had to. We did look for them on the way to and from Corpus Christie. In the end we had to make a targeted trip to the one near Italy TX. Super entertaining. It's a chain of oversized stop and go's selling everything from food and souvenirs to gas and clothing.

Shanna trying on hat at Buccees

And we got to spend the 4th of July with the family. Mike hosts a barbque picnic and pool party then he and his kids set off super high quality fireworks.

I loved the safety measures and watching teenagers run back and forth to set off the rockets safely was super entertaining. I don't have any pictures of that since it was complete dark. Here are a few images of the sparklers that started the party.

Lumos

Sparkler interpretive dance

Drive to Texas

June 25-27, 2012 

 I plotted out several routes to get to Texas. The plan was to take our time and take lots of breaks to stretch our legs. I was also hoping to avoid any of the seriously bad weather that had been plaguing Texas. Every evening I would work with my weather apps to determine where we'd go next.

On Friday we left work early and headed for Wyoming. We were only going to drive for 3 hours to get to Kemmerer. I've never stopped there before and it was a great little town. We stopped at a rock shop cause I'm always interested in new rocks

This shop was all kinds of amazing: https://wyomingfossils.com/ 

The next day we headed for the outskirts of Denver. And there we found out that locating a Red Lobster was going to be harder than we though. This was during the lull in Covid so we thought it would be okay (and time proved it was) to eat in the restaurant. We circled one location a number of times before realizing that it had not only closed but had already been taken over by another restaurant. Eventually we found one further away and YUM fish.

That evening while looking at the weather I could see a line of severe storms lining up to get us if we took 2 more days to get there. Our only hope was a brief break in storms the next evening. We got up early and skedaddled. We got into Texas on 287 and drove right between large storm clouds with lightning and rain in the near distance on both the left and right sides of the car. Phew, made it. 

 Shanna's travel companion

 

The funniest thing about this trip is that Idaho was about to get slammed with a monster 102 degree heatwave. Texas rarely got above 80 something. In July. Crazy.

Texas Vacation, the outbound trip

Shanna and I left Pocatello and drove to the Salt Lake City Airport. We had to park in long term parking, since we would be gone for a week. I was impressed with the size of this lot. We got out and talking and I was slightly flustered we headed to a nearby pick=up point for the shuttle service. It was only when we were on the shuttle and far from the car that I realized that I might not have locked the car. ARRRRGH. Once offloaded at the airport I took a break then left Shanna with our bags and took the shuttle back out to check on the car. I just knew that I’d stress myself sick if I didn’t check and we had more than enough time. And yes, habit had made me lock the doors so it was a false alarm.   *sigh*


 So I got back to the airport and we moved right through all of the processes. Since we had time to kill we stopped for lunch at a good Italian restaurant (Il Viaggio) inside the airport. I did the usual of chicken alfredo and Shanna tried the carbonarra.

On the plane, I tried to listen to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I'm so used to listening to books via Audible at higher speeds that the slow speaking narrator Michael York was an impossibility.  I ended up listening to music and playing on my iPad. Shanna too had her headphones on.

Bluebeary the blue bear was a resident of Bozeman till Shanna came along and gifted him to me. He became our travelling companion and photographic subject, thereby negating the need for photos of us.

 We got lucky on the plane and though I had purchased two tickets we ended up with three seats. I’m sure Bluebeary appreciated it. Melinda picked us up at the airport and we went out and feasted at Applebees. Got to Italy TX and the comforts of my parents home that night at 9:30 p.m.

 








P.S. I kind of hate all blogging software. I've spent most of the past two hours trying to get the formatting to do what I want it to do.  It doesn't seem to matter that it looks right in the editor, once published it gets fricked up.  I'm quite mad at this and am contemplating tossing the whole effort.  Argh.