In Which I Don’t See Armadillos and it Feels Like Summer

Hello from some Texas interstate!

Right now we’re on our southern road trip! We’ve been planning this for a few years and finally got around to it this past week.

So right now I’m in the top bunk of our RV with the window open, feeling like I’m on an old train. Well, I’m listening to switchfoot and needtobreathe (Bullets by NTB right now in case you’re interested) on bluetooth earbuds so that takes some of the old fashioned-ness out of it. But it’s pretty great nevertheless. I love RVs and even more I like 70° weather, especially when compared to the freezing temperatures and ice storms we came from.

I did something to my back while taking this picture and now it hurts which does, in fact, detract a bit from the glee of the previous paragraph. Ah, to be young again. (Just kidding, I’m seventeen.)

So yeah, it’s been great!

The first two days were pretty snowy. We’re trying to get the rest of the contiguous states we haven’t been to yet, and Arkansas was the first. We spent the night at a rather empty, rather snowy, rather back-in-the-boonies-y campground. And! Guess who we met up with while we were there?

Aria (Allison’s best friend) and Andrew

That was fun. We discussed cars and water bottles and sonic booms and stuff like that!

The next day the most exciting thing was probably getting stuck in a bathroom stall and having to climb out. I’d always kinda hoped it would happen sometime and I finally got my chance!

Allison and I were quite amused.

Other than that it was mostly a lot of curvy roads and snow! We did get to Oklahoma in the afternoon and then the sun came out. Our campground was by a very icy lake and there was a person with an adorable golden retriever/chow mix dog.

Jeff and I also got our gas station classic of chocolate milk and honeybuns. Health!

The next day was actually the next day (we watched A Map of Tiny Perfect Things the night before, have any of you watched it?) so we headed on.

We stopped at this weird town-y place (I think it was called Medicine Park) for lunch. It was very empty (that’s the nice thing about vacations in February!) but the food was good!

There were lots of brightly colored and oddly shaped buildings.

Also cacti! Which left spikes in my fingers for whatever reason. Rude.

Before we left Oklahoma we stopped at this cool wildlife refuge place that had really neat scenery.

We didn’t see any critters on our hike, but once we started driving again we saw some prairie dogs.

While we were watching them a longhorn cow lumbered over, very slowly, to see what we were.

It didn’t seem to impressed with what it saw.

There were also buffalo.

Apparently armadillos also exist there but, despite my wearing my “just a girl who loves armadillos” t shirt, none came out to say hi.

We journeyed on til we got to Texas. Then, around supper time, we got to this amazing overlook right as the sun was setting. It was a state park that I don’t remember the name of and it was pretty incredible.

We walked down some cactus lined paths and just looked at it for a while.

Texas!

Well, the boys threw rocks over the edge (of course). But yeah, it was beautiful. I sat outside and ate half frozen leftovers until I was half frozen myself. Then we moved on.

It was dark by then and I hopped up to this bunk and wrote a letter and felt the cool fresh texas air blowing in my face.

(Then we passed several feed lots and dairies and the air became decidedly less fresh, so the window was shut.)

Today we headed to New Mexico which is as far as we’re going. We drove around and looked at the giant dairies and circle fields. Road trips are much more interesting when you’re farmers I think, since you drive past a lot of farm land.

I didn’t see any armadillos there either but I did see tumbleweed!! I was pretty excited about that. I’ve wanted to see them ever since I was six and saw one on our farm, which I drew in my nature journal, only to be informed that there were no tumbleweeds on the central East Coast. Six year old be would have been proud to see a real live (dead?) tumbleweed today.

We stopped by the edge of the road so we could actually set foot in New Mexico. I almost took home some synthetic/plastic stuffing because I thought it was cotton for a little bit. That would have been a weird souvenir. (But in my defense (even though I’m also arguing in my offense (prosecution…??)) we had just seen real cotton growing in a ditch by the road.)

We also had to stop at a tractor dealer when the boys spotted some Fendt tractors.

That’s been our road trip so far! Oh I also got this weird packaged chocolate filled croissant (I love croissants) at a gas station. I wouldn’t say I love packaged gas station croissants, but it was an interesting experience and I’d never seen them before.

But yeah, it’s been a great road trip so far! I’m reeaaallly hoping I’ll see an armadillo yet, but we’ll see.
Welp, I’m off to watch texas go by, keep an eye out for armadillos, listen to music (Joy Invincible by Switchfoot now), and hope my back unkinks.
Have a great rest of your February, I hope it’s as great as Texas feels right now!

– Megan