Day two - Dunkin Donuts Coffee and Three More States Down

I'm stretched out on the bed at Hampton Inn in Amarillo...it was hard to find since Jillian thought it was on the other side of the underpass and turned out to be surrounded by one-way streets. That's the Hampton that was hard to find, I found the bed right off. But here we are at long last. The staff had the requested extra pillow and towels awaiting in the room when we arrived just a half hour ago. And even added a few little peppermints to our welcome bundle. It has been a long day but the drive was not bad at all.

This is not to say there weren't plenty of people who caused me minor annoyance during my turns driving. CaDiva's reminded me from time to time that the other drivers couldn't hear me yell at them from inside our car. Frankly I can understand that, given that a few of them seemed to practice contortion-isms displayed by keeping their heads and or thumbs up where they weren't of any particular use. I tried to solve that problem by using universal hand signals to explain the correct merge procedures and appropriate following distance, but she found that unacceptable as well.

Here I am, just trying to make the world a safer place by providing helpful hints to improve driving skills but you see the kind of grief I get. And all of this from a woman who sleeps under a pillow, while wearing ear plugs and wakes me up repeatedly with barely comprehensible demands to roll over. She seems to think I snore. Which is not true, occasionally my uvula will undulate and make a purring-like sound, but that is no call to wake me out of a sound sleep.

Speaking of helpful hints, to all road builders - east/west roads have a tendency to face a very bright orb at certain times of the day...consider canting them a bit to the north or south in the future. Oh, and when you  decide to fix a road by cutting four lanes of traffic down to two, separated only by yellow reflective disk covered concrete barriers, please remember that the drivers on the adverse side of the road will most likely not turn off their brights. So it may be a good idea to ban anyone who cannot prove he or she knows where the dim switch is from any road on which I'm driving while you fix it.

I finally found my picture.

I planned to post a lovely selection of photos but I am apparently not as smart as the camera I borrowed from my Niecelette. I took one darling picture of the new Dunkin Donuts in Overland Park - the mecca of all true coffee lovers. (After the DD employees  were good enough to give me both a thermos and mug of coffee with just the right amount of creme and sugar I had to accept one of their Cocoa Boston Kreme pastries, just to be polite you know.) But somehow that picture of the heart-warming orange, brown and white disk disappeared. Oddly though, the one of CaDiva standing in front of the bland green on white piece of plastic was still on the memory card. This was odd on several levels. First I took both snaps. And we drove about three hours out of KC after taking the first picture in front of Dunkin Donuts, not seeing either purveyor of caffeine again until we got well into Oklahoma. There we found the, you know, S word coffee shop, but no DD. Not to be unfair, I took a picture of CaDiva in front of that aforementioned plastic green on white emblem. And somehow my picture of DD disappeared.  Now I am not one to look for conspiracy theories where there isn't one but after the incident at the Dallas Fort Worth airport, I'm beginning to wonder.

CaDiva and her ubiquitous Venti Mocha (this time hot)

CaDiva stuck with hot versions of her mocha no whip as the weather was gray and cold all day. Well, colder than I wanted it to be. The snow that fell in Kansas didn't stick to anything and we weren't walking so I'm going to just enjoy the increasing Spring as we drive south and now west.

So far we have driven through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and now Texas. During the last hours of daylight I was trying to get snaps of Oklahoma red clay or oil wells but again, CaDiva refused to stop the car in the middle of the Interstate, even the one on old Route 66. We'll start up again tomorrow and be at In & Out Burger ... ah I mean Kingman Arizona tomorrow night.


Hey, HRH remind me to tell you about the two youngsters riding a luggage cart at the Pear Tree. Something not uncommonly seen with younger siblings apparently.