It is August 8th and we are spending the night at the Route 66 Motel on Route 66 in Tucumcari NM. We travel to Albequerque tomorrow and then on to Gallup tomorrow afternoon. We will be around an hour from Zuni and will head there Monday morning. I'll check in at the district office for some paperwork and then hopefully we will get into our apartment. Tom leaves Wednesday afternoon.

It has been hot and super windy. The trees in Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle actually lean toward the Northeast because of the wind. I would open the car door and my "literature" would start blowing everywhere and on a couple times the door of the truck would slam shut. It was 98º today.

Our route was - Atlanta, Montgomery, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo and now to Tucumcari. We are not making and unnecessary stops so I have no photos yet. I expect to get a few tomorrow. Our trip has really been uneventful. There was a major traffice jam in Memphis - two insterstates were intersecting and they were working on both at the same time and it was 5:30pm when we were traveling through. Traffic was at a standstill. I guess it took us over 45 minutes to go about 10 miles.

The transfer trucks on I 40 must number in the millions.

So, I have a little event to write about. Last night at our motel, Tom went out to the car to get toothpaste and another time to get a bag. Well, he was gone a long time both times. I mean a good 20 minutes. I just figured he was fooling around with the truck. Then this morning, he went to get coffee at the motel breakfast. He was gone a long time again - enough time for me to get a second snooze. Now, let me back up here to about four years ago , when I was discussing finances with my brother Mike, I told Mike that if I could keep Tom from drawing cash out of the ATM machine, that I believed we could save some money. I had no idea what he did with the money he drew out. Then Mike said " He may have him a girlfriend somewhere!" I'm lying there in the bed now, remembering that conversation and realizing that once again Tom has left and is simply not returning. I started imagining all the things that could be going on and started to get out of the bed, but then he returned. I told him my concerns and we got a good laugh out of it. Turns out he had been gassing the car, repacking the truck, etc.

 We have seen a dead armadillo and a very still huge turtle on the side of the road. We have seen over a million cows.

I'm going to change the photo on my blog - I'll have to take just the right photo.