Day 12: Tuesday 6-Jul-1999
From: Joplin, Missouri
To: Santa Rosa, New Mexico
Distance : 620mi (992 km)
Time: 12h
The alarm on the pager woke us up at 4:30 am (EDT). However, we fell asleep again and didn't wake up until 5:00 am (EDT). We are now in a different time zone, Central time zone, 1 hour behind what we are used to, so 5:00 am is actually 4:00 am for us. Since it is so hot during the day we will try to stay on this schedule during the whole trip, so we get most of the driving done during the morning.
We put together the last things, made coffee and sandwiches.
At 6:00 am (EDT) we were on the way. This was going to be another hot day. As soon as we entered Oklahoma, the speed limit increased to 75mph (120km/h); no wonder Jim Weston can drive so fast!. Of course, the truckers drive even faster. The Airstream trailer handled really well at higher speeds.
The landscape was very varying, from green nice hills in Oklahoma to flat land in northern Texas and hilly again in New Mexico. The parts of Oklahoma we could see had plenty of farm land with cows and corn fields. With our GPS system we could see that our altitude gradually increased, first to to about 1800ft (600m) and then gradually to 5000ft+ (1500m) in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We could feel the truck getting a bit more sluggish. The fuel consumption has gradually gotten worse as we've been heading out west, compared to what we're used to back home in New Hampshire. I am running 87 octane just like home. At home we can reach 10mpg (2.3Lit/10Km) versus 7.5mpg (3.0Lit/10Km) out here. This is for a combination weight of about 15,000lbs (about 7 tons).
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| Howdy! We're in Texas now. |
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| Parked at a Texas rest stop |
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| Fire ants!!! Izzy is jumping around, trying to shake them off her sandals |
As we approached Santa Rosa, New Mexico, we run into a thunderstorm. It was interesting how local the rain was. Some of the mud from Dayton got washed off the truck.
We have change the original plan a bit, since we thought it was to short of a day to stop in Amarillo, Texas and too long to go all the way to Albuqurque, New Mexico we decided to stop in between in a sleepy town called Santa Rosa. Here we are at 7000ft (2100m). We saw big signs out on the highway for a KOA camping ground. We made a change and stopped there. They had plenty of free sites. This was a much nicer place than the parking lot yesterday. The rain had cooled down the weather so it was really nice. There were sprinkle in the evening.
After dinner the sun came out and Lillemor took the kids to the swimming pool. We ran into an Airstream couple from Nevada. They were members at large in the club and had not attended any events. The Sundby's was their name, we think. I'll try and get some WBCCI material over to them. Bedtime at around 11 est (9 mst).