Continuing Home - New Mexico to Oklahoma to Arkansas - 1,260 Miles to Go

Shabbos we were at Santa Rosa Lake State Park in NM. Its main recommendations - it was conveniently located on the route home, and our campsite provided an electric connection. Electricity was necessary over Shabbos to run the water tank heaters so our pipes wouldn’t freeze during the unusual cold spell. As an extra precaution, we poured antifreeze down the drains. Temps got as low as 13 degrees Friday night. B”H, our pipes survived.

As a bonus, I was able to use our crockpot and we had hot soup for Shabbos lunch.

We took a walk to the lake Shabbos morning. The lake was more of a pond. Formed by a dam, the water level is very low due to the extreme drought the Southwest has been experiencing the past few years. The story of the drought was one we heard over and over on our trip.

Unsightly bleached skeletons of trees that drowned when the water covered them and were left high and dry when the water receded

Sunday was a long boring slog from New Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma City on Route 40 (covering the same ground as Route 66, another repeating theme on our trips).

One bright spot (literally) on the drive, just off the highway before Amarillo, was Cadillac Ranch.

Cadillac Ranch is “public art installation and sculpture,” or looked at from a different angle, a bunch of heavily graffitied old Cadillacs buried nose deep in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere, unpleasantly downwind from a stockyard.

Last time we were there, with Yoni and Aryeh almost 20 years ago, it was a weird, lonely place. Now it is still weird, but overrun with hordes wielding spray paint who are determined to leave their mark. However, the paint never even gets a chance to dry before the next horde adds another layer.

Some enterprising person has even set up a truck selling cans of spray paint. On a good day, they can sell up to 150. I asked.

Everything in the area is a canvas, not just the cars. The garbage cans were highly decorated as were some of the stalks of whatever had been growing in the fields. When we got back to Our V, we were relieved that it was still the same shade of unmarred silver as when we left.

Sunday night we boondocked at a Walmart, otherwise know as Wallydocking, just outside of Oklahoma City.

Monday, we saw the site of the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing and stopped for a tour of the State Capital Building. We have been “collecting” state capitals.

Onward through the rest of Oklahoma to Arkansas. The scenery changed from endless flat  fields to scenery similar to Appalachia. We pass lakes and rivers. We are not used to seeing so much open water.

Somewhere in the past two days we lost an hour. I am jetlagged. 

We are currently in Hot Springs National Park till Wednesday morning.