Road Trip

Son-in-law Kenny, grandson Travis, and I left Show Low about 5:30 Friday morning on a road trip. It was fast road trip, but we covered a lot of miles. That was okay with me because Kenny did all the driving.

We took U.S. Highway 60 east to Springerville, where we picked up U.S. Highway 191 south. The route was formally called U.S. 666, but they changed the number back in 1992 because people complained it was the “Devil’s Highway,” since the number 666 matched the “Number of the Beast” in Christian theology. So much for the separation of church and state.

In Alpine, we got on U.S.180, a winding narrow highway, and followed it into New Mexico. It took us south through Silver City, a town with a violent frontier past where Old West outlaw Billy the Kid first ran afoul of the law, and eventually connected with Interstate 10 in Deming. From there it was a lot of long miles into Texas, through El Paso and on and on.

This is a route that I have traveled many times during our life as fulltime RVers, but it was the first time for Kenny and Travis. I can’t say they were much impressed with West Texas. As day turned to night, there was a magnificent lightning display and we thought we were going to get hammered by rain, but by the time we reached Boerne, in the Texas Hill Country, it had cleared up.

We checked into the Hampton Inn, then walked to the nearby Chili’s for a late dinner before going back to the hotel and to bed. In hindsight, that wasn’t the best choice for food because Kenny got very sick after going to bed and spent much of the night hugging the porcelain throne. He looked like death warmed over the next morning, but swore he was able to get up and go.

Of course, no adventure is complete unless I screw something up. In this case, we had connecting rooms. I went through the connecting door to check on Kenny and managed to close it behind me, effectively locking myself out of the room because I didn’t have my key card. No problem, I went downstairs to the desk, they gave me a new card, and I went up to get back into my room to find that the safety lock was also engaged and could only be opened from the inside. Well, darn it. So back downstairs I went, and the young lady at the desk called their maintenance man and told him to come to work fast and get me into the room, since he was the only one who knew how to defeat the safety lock. But as it turned out, he wasn’t the only one. Travis somehow managed to bypass it with a pocketknife and got the door opened.

With my overnight bag retrieved, we got in the truck, and with a still green around the gills Kenny at the wheel, we drove another 20 miles or so to meet with a gentleman named Dave Morris. The purpose of the trip was this gorgeous 1952 Chrysler Windsor Deluxe convertible, which Dave had put up for auction on the Hagerty classic car auction website. It was made the same year Terry and I were born, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I had been telling Terry that I wanted to have one more old car before I die, and this was the one. I was fortunate to have the winning bid.

The car is pretty much original, with the Spitfire 264.5 cubic-inch inline-six engine and Fluid-Matic semi-automatic transmission. This transmission is new to me. It has a clutch that you depress to shift from one gear to another when first starting out. Once you have it in gear, you don’t use the clutch anymore, even at stop signs.

By then, Kenny was feeling better, and we got the car loaded onto my flatbed trailer and tied down, and were on the road again, heading for home by 10:30. Kenny said he didn’t want to take I-10 all the way again, so instead we drove north to Comfort and left the interstate to make our way northwest along a series of U.S. and state highways. We went through the oil patch and past cotton farms, and through some interesting small towns until we eventually crossed into New Mexico on U.S. Highway 380. Kenny had always wanted to see Roswell, of alien crash fame, and he was impressed enough that he wants to take Tiffany back for a weekend visit sometime.

We stayed on 380 through Lincoln County, with its own violent Old West past, and the tiny village of Capitan, where a badly burned bear cub was found after a wildfire in 1950 and became famous as Smokey Bear, mascot of the U.S. Forest Service.

More miles brought us to Interstate 25 for a short jaunt up to U.S. 60 in Socorro. This is another route I know well from our RVing days, and we took it west through the small towns of Magdalena, Datil, Pie Town, and Quemado. Four hours later, at somewhere around 11:00 PM, we were pulling into our driveway, with 1776 miles under our belt in two days. I offered to drive a couple of times, but Kenny was fine with it and let me just sit back and enjoy the ride, so I did.

It sure was good to be home and see Terry waiting for me, along with Alli, who acted like I had been gone for a month. We got the car unloaded and into the garage, and then the guys headed home with Tiffany. It didn’t take long before Terry and I were in bed.

We slept in yesterday, as did Kenny, and then spent the day puttering around the house, not doing much of anything. I must be getting old because even being a passenger princess for that long wore me out. It’s good to be back home, and I’m looking forward to getting to know my new old car. Thanks, Kenny. It was quite an adventure, wasn’t it?

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And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. You know there has to be a story behind this sign.

Thought For The Day – If it makes you happy or gives you peace, it’s not a waste of time.