Road Trip Day 2 - Friday

Hi Everyone!

So currently we have settled in at Tucumcari, New Mexico for the night.  We drove about 8 hours today from Flagstaff.. and saw a few cool things along the way.

First thing in the morning, after checking out of Marriott Fairfield Inn (which was a nice hotel with free internet yay) we got a car wash for Lilo (that's the name of my Pontiac Vibe hehe).  The people in Flagstaff are very nice and helpful.. a lady at Walgreens recommended this place to us and I'm glad. This was a very thorough car wash and I'm glad we got it, Lilo hadn't had one in ages.. too bad bugs would continue to splatter on her bumper, but it's all good, at least her other 3 sides are still clean after a day of driving hahaha...

Our first stop along the way was Meteor Crater.  You have to say "Meteor Crater" in a deep, superhero-ish kind of voice.. or it won't have a grand effect.. that's what they did at the attraction.. they had a recording to welcome you when you get there and it's like "Welcome to [deep voice] METEOR CRATER".. it sounded so epic LOL.

So basically, it's the 'original' meteor crash from which all scientific knowledge has built upon or something.  Supposedly it crashed into the earth like millions of years ago.. it's BIG.

There's telescopes to help you see things up close.. Not sure if you can see it in the pic, but the telescope is pointing at a mining site in the middle of the crater.. and through the lens you can see how big a 6' astronaut would be compared to everything else. It looks like a dot if you just look at it with the naked eye hahaha.

A picture of me and Fred hahaha..

So, we saw a hole in the ground yesterday (Grand Canyon) followed by another hole in the ground today (Meteor Crater) hehehe..

We continued driving and I saw a dust devil.. can you see it in the picture?

Then we were in New Mexico!  Which was a welcome change from Arizona since Arizona was mostly flat with nothing but.. dirt and weeds hahaha (at least the part that we drove by).. But I can't ever live in Arizona b/c there's barely any green grass. Your yard is just .. dirt.. I saw a baseball field and couldn't figure out where the diamond was.. and where the green part was supposed to be.. cuz it was all just ... DIRT hahahaha... but oh well :)

Anyways, on to New Mexico.. They have more stuff like.. big rocks.. plateaus.. and stuff..

We ate lunch at KFC in Grants, NM and the whole place was filled with Native Americans having lunch.  It was cool b/c I don't think I've ever seen Native Americans in person.  Some of them look like they could be filipino hahaha.  And I got to hear their native language too. 

What was funky was there was a kid behind the KFC counter.  I guess a kid of one of the workers.  She was like 8 and walking around playing with stuff.. and I'm like - Fred, loook, I don't think she's supposed to be there LOL. Dangerous and unsanitary, but whatever, the food was good HAHAHA.

We passed through NM's capital - Albuquerque.  That is a hard name to spell. I had to do spell check.  I have to say, the highway system in Albuquerque was BEAUTIFUL.  Everything was so .. clean... and.. PINK. May have been the cleanest prettiest city I've ever driven through...

We finally arrived in Tucumcari, New Mexico.. And the receptionist at Hampton Inn recommended we try Del's Restaurant.  I am very happy with the quality of the food, but I did have one complaint.  At the "all you can eat" salad bar, it was hard to find things you could eat!  They didn't have tomatoes or shredded cheese! Can you imagine!??? How is that a salad bar!  So I basically had lettuce, cucumbers, and ranch and that was my salad HAHAHA.

But overall, the food was so good!  I got a chicken fried steak and it was probably the best and the biggest one I've ever eaten. You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck! I only finished half of it! Fred got Chile Rellenos and enchiladas.

He also got something called a sopapilla.  It's like.. thin fluffy soft bread you add honey to:

And to top it off, creme brulee :)

And now we're safe and sound in the hotel.  Thank You God!  Just a few more days and I'll be in Philly! Tomorrow we're going to pass by Amarillo, Texas to try out some steak place.. and end up in Oklahoma City, so we can attend church there on Sunday morning :)