Monday, 7/25, Travel from Albuquerque, NM to Oklahoma City, OK

We overslept a bit this morning.  I had set my cell phone alarm for 6:30AM, but
at 7:20AM Karen woke me and asked me when I had planned to get up.  Not sure if
I just slept thru the alarm or it got muffled on the moist carpet where it laid
(they were doing carpet cleaning in the hotel).  So we didn't get out of the
hotel until around 10:00AM MDT.

We went to the Old Town Historic area of Albuquerque.  (As Josh requested, from
the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, we made a left at 'Albikoiykee' to get there.) 
They have shops and historic buildings still from the good old days - like 300
years ago.  As we were walking a guy who does these two-person bike tours of the
area came over to us and asked, "Are you Jewish??"  So we replied in the
affirmative and he told us something very interesting.  There is a church there
that needed funding to rebuild back in the 1700's.  At around that time, Jews
had been settling in the area.  The Jews helped fund the construction of the
church, and as a thank you, the church embedded two Stars of David right above the
alter in the masonry work.  He said there are only a handful of churches in the
world where you could find something like that.  Later on, we peeked in thru the
open doors and checked it out.  I had asked him about synagogues in the area but
he said there hadn't been any edifices, and that they must have just held
services in the private residences.

Raising the flag in the morning

 

Hot Chili Peppers (maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers?)

We left the town at around 11:00 to head to Oklahoma City - more accurately,
Moore, OK, just south of OKC.  Moore seems like a suburb of OKC, but on the map
it appears to be kind of part of the city.

Our route took us thru the Texas panhandle and along the way we stopped at
Cadillac Ranch on the suggestion of Bob L.  It's right off the side of the
highway (US 40) in Amarillo, TX.  I did not see any signs for it, but the place
was kind of crowded.  As we pulled up to the entrance of the ranch, there were
some pretty big gusts of wind blowing the dust all over.  No one wanted to get
out.  I waited a minute and it died down and so I went out.  (The others still didn't
want to get out.)  The rancher there decided to bury old Cadillacs with half of
them sticking up out of the ground, as if to grow new ones.  The tradition seems
to be to come with spray paint and grafitti them all up.  There was a big pile
of empty cans there and other visitors were leaving their marks.  I did not join
in.

Cadillac Ranch

We reached Moore, OK at around 8:00PM CDT.  On and off downpours along the way
as it looked again like we were traveling along a storm edge.  Had dinner of
leftovers from Saturday and then the kids went swimming.  Tomorrow we head for
Memphis, TN, which is a bit shorter trip than today's, plus we'll be in the same
time zone all day.  We'll probably do something in downtown Oklahoma City in the
morning, including visiting the memorial for the Oklahoma City bombing.

Crossing the border from Texas on US-40E

Looked like a fire in the distance.  We smelled the smoke as it came across the highway.  Maybe a fresh lightning hit.