Amarillo To Chandler, OK

We spent almost a month in Amarillo and found it was an interesting part of the state to visit. Today we departed for Chandler, Oklahoma on the continuation of our journey.  The prep for departure usually takes a full day, but we spanned the activities over Monday and Tuesday.

We left the park at 0800 and had planned this leg to be the longest of the four legs to Nappanee at 313 miles.  We have found that a 300 mile leg gives us two rest stops on the way and a decent arrival time at the destination to wind down, while also anticipating delays for traffic and such.  Amarillo is likely planning for the future as they have built a highway system that rings the city at quite a distance from the core.  The 335 is a four lane divided highway and from what we saw the only people that are using it now are locals as we never saw any transports or ‘through traffic’ on it.  The city is not that large and I never saw any signs of rush hour slowdowns so we took the I40 straight through to the East side.

As with some of the other stops we have made, once you are on the other side of town the scenery changes.  It was quite noticeable as we left the city behind how the landscape was basically that same flat expanse, but it was now green fields of grasses the further east we went and the not a lot of indication of feed lots.  So, whatever grass fed cattle farming and general agriculture takes place there likely takes place on the East side of town.

Not long after we left we saw a large cross up ahead in the distance.  This turned out to be the Groom Cross, which is a 19 storey metal cross erected primarily as a tourist draw.  Had we known about it prior we would have made the stop.

The rest of the trip was quite easy.  Downhill all the way other than a few hills and we ended up in Chandler at 800 feet; which is more or less where we will be for the rest of the journey. The scenery had now transitioned to what you would think of as typical for the eastern part of the US - fields of whatever crop is going to go in, with deciduous trees defining the lot lines, all interspersed with bush lots of mixed deciduous and coniferous trees.

Not much further down the road we crossed over in to Oklahoma.  The rest area was clean and well laid out and we were able to get out and stretch our legs for a bit.

Our final stop for the day was in Chandler, OK.  The rest area there is a busy spot with truck parking on the inbound side of the fuel station as well as three large lanes of parking on the outbound side.  We didn’t need fuel and went through to the backside and picked a spot that we would be comfortable for the night.

Shortly after we arrived a guy pulled in next to us with a rig transporting three cars.  A brand new 2025 Chevy SUV that had been rolled, a Jeep SUV that had been stolen in California, and a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville that looked like it came out of the showroom.  This was a beautiful example of a collector car and even had the original sales sticker taped in the window.

In speaking with the driver, he was an independent owner operator that transport vehicles for a living.  He was on his way back from an auction in Glendale, Arizona to Chicago for a car collector who the driver believed also owns a parts yard.  The driver was from the middle of the state of Indiana and had trips lined up for the next few weeks transporting various vehicles.  He mentioned he is paid $4000 for the round trip to Arizona.  At 5 mpg on his truck I figure his fuel cost at $3.00 a gallon paid on a fuel card will be half that cost, which only leaves $2000 for truck maintenance and his earnings.  A tough life for sure.

He then commented his trip next week was to take two ambulances from a factory in Indiana down to Fort Lauderdale so they could be blessed by, presumably a Rabbi, before they are shipped to Israel.  His job was to take the ambulances to Fort Lauderdale, wait for the blessing to take place and then drive them up to Baltimore to be loaded on a ship for Israel.  Go figure.  You figure it would be cheaper to take the ambulances straight to Baltimore and have the blessing done there.  He said when the war started a few years ago with Israel the need for ambulances was so great they were shipping them over on aircraft.

Thank you for stopping by to read.