Albuquerque to Amarillo

When we got to Albuquerque Pat suggested driving straight through to Amarillo, but that would have meant getting to Amarillo By Morning, and I was not interested in doing that.

The drive out through Albuquerque to the East takes you through the centre of the city but the freeway was clear for us all the way and we started the long climb up to the last two peaks we would encounter on this trip.  The last one was almost 7,100 feet and from there on it was all downhill.  By the time we arrived in Amarillo the altitude was 3,700 feet so still relatively high compared to what we are used to at home and what we were at in Quartzsite.

As we entered Texas the land flattened out as we are at the southern portion of the Great Plains.  The fields seem to go on forever and are dotted with cows, horses and short bushes that, from a distance, look like cows.  So if you are travelling this area, don’t be fooled like I was when I thought some of the fields were hundreds and hundreds of cows.

Also very prevalent are windmills.  I mentioned in my post about the trip from Ranger to Van Horn last November about the number of windmills we saw.  This part of Texas puts that to shame.  There are literally hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of them.  They are all lined up in a perfect grid pattern, and just about all were spinning.  We met someone after we arrived and they said Amarillo is the windiest city in the US.  Not Chicago after all.  As we travelled along we also saw a lot of trucks carrying blades for the turbines.  Not sure if they were for assembly of new turbines, or whether they are being disassembled and taken away somewhere.  Either way, again we saw flocks and flocks of birds so these have figured out how to avoid the blades.

The closer we got to Amarillo the land changed over to huge feed lots with thousands of cattle.  The lot closest to Amarillo stretched for over a mile along the side of the freeway.

We fuelled up the RV and arrived at the RV park mid afternoon.  With everything that is going on I am not sure what the fuel price will be when we leave here at the end of the month, so I am good for about 900 miles.  We paid $2.99 a gallon so that is not too bad.  As we travel along further East after this the prices generally get lower until we get to Missouri and then they start to creep back up.  Right now the cheapest fuel we can expect is in Oklahoma City at $2.79, so if the prices stay down when we leave we will top back up at that point.

The RV park where we are staying has taken a page out of the Cadillac Ranch playbook and sunk what looks like some form of RV into the ground at the entrance to the park.  Either that, or they are serious about not allowing RV’s older than twenty years into the park, and this is what happens if you try to sneak one in.

Thanks for stopping by to read.  We have a number of things planned while we are here so will post things about northern Texas.