First Day Report

Reporting on our first day on the road:

Miles: 497; hours: 10:06.

Ending point: Comfort Inn, Guymon, OK.

Highlights:
1. Dinner at Cattleman Cafe, Liberal, KS. Best chicken fried steak ever!
2. Hooker, OK - ultimate in Chamber of Commerce promotions - See the picture of their sign.
3. Prairies of Kansas - lots of rolling hills, cattle, wheat fields and oil wells (pumping away madly).

Lowlights:
1. Mullinville KS - Bill wouldn't stop for the whirligigs along the highway (as seen on CH-19 KCPT "Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations") - something about a semi on his tail and a 30 mph headwind.
2. Plains KS - Bill wouldn't stop to let Sandra make a snowball left over from the 10" blizzard a few days ago.
3. Meade KS - Sandra couldn't find the sign she remembered from last year: "The Dalton Boys shouldn't have gone to Coffeyville."

Comments:
1. Great use by several towns of pretty small tourism hooks. Already mentioned Hooker OK - oh, and their baseball team is called the "Horny Toads.". Meade KS has signs all over promoting their Dalton Hideout museum. One sign for Greenburg KS (home of world's largest hand-dug well) said "You'll get a BIG-WELLcome here."
2. First Sightings - Bill got the first antelope, first cholla cactus, 1st oil well and 1st dead coyote. Sandra got 1st prairie dog hole. No buffalo or dead armadillos.
3. Unique sighting - a herd of black angus galumphing across the highway, then turning around and galumphing back. Think they were escaped convicts.

Tomorrow: Tucumcari NM dinosaur museum, Roswell Art Museum (just to tell them that we're really there for the UFO museum), possibly Lincoln (Billy the Kid country), ending in Ruidoso, with perhaps a visit to the Apache casino.

Tune in tomorrow, same time, same station.