July 24th, 2018

Oklahoma City OK to Gallup, NM

We woke up today knowing we were going to drive about 650 miles. A 10 Hour drive, but headed to home.

We headed west on interstate 40 and watch the land changed in Oklahoma From field to grazing land. From rolling hills to flatlands. We crossed into Texas.  We were crossing the Texas panhandle. We drove about three hours across Texas as the land continue to dry out. We were already missing the green and trees of the east.

We rolled into New Mexico and we're still on the plains for another 100 miles. We had noticed for much of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, the old US Route 66 was either parallel to I-40 or the new highway covered the old.  Dick remembered riding the original Route 66 twice, once in 1959 and again in 1965.  On the second trip, parts of the old highway were already being replaced with the "new" Interstate Highway.  Standing on the old highway brought back many memories.

Then we finally begin to see mountains, the southern reaches of the Rocky Mountains. We made it through a pass and then we were quickly west of the Rockies and driving through Albuquerque. New Mexico is such a beautiful state with lots of rock formations and sometimes some of the red the red earth and rocks beautiful storm is passing over some storms passing over some of the plateaus but we didn't get rained on. 

We drove on to our night stop in Gallup . If we hadn't had a hotel reservation we might've driven a little farther. We were ready to stop however. We had a good evening meal in a Middle Eastern restaurant.  That was a surprise in far western New Mexico.  Then to bed early because tomorrow we are headed for home.