But Piggy, I've got the Conchas Lake!

Wanted: Two cheesy Tourists

This morning we awoke, or should I more aptly describe saying we lost the fight to the heat and surrendered to a state of awareness, in a KOA in Oklahoma with the goal of shooting across I-40 through Texas as fast as we possibly could, and ending up somewhere in New Mexico en route to Santa Fe to see Yonder Mountain String Band—which I should add was the point of much discussion and debate in the car as it was determined that Kim and I were under the impression that the concert was on different dates—on Sunday the 27^th as it turned out. Travelling across Oklahoma this morning, we made it our mission to locate (on our handy world domination of Cracker Barrel map) the closest Cracker Barrel to offload what turned out to be a huge bore of a book on tape and to find something new.

After sucking down some grub, we headed out much more full and happily clutching The Golden Compass on CD. Settling in to the story, we plodded along through Oklahoma (where the wind was, surprisingly, not sweeping down the plain), through towns like Clinton, through the hometowns of Carrie Underwood and Garth Brooks, and through Texas stopping only at another Starbucks for some high-test stuff. Only this one looks like it won’t be shutting down since they had a “now hiring” poster in the window.

After getting out of Texas without helping our President clear brush on his Crawford ranch, we entered New Mexico and the first of our many mesas became apparent as the landscape began to transform before our very eyes. Ultimately we decided to cut off of 40 and onto Rout 104 at the small town (“hey we ain’t that small!” I can imagine them saying) of Tucumcari, New Mexico toward the Conchas Lake state park area.

Here we found rocky and sandy beaches and cliffs bordering a wonderful “solid as the New Orleans Levees” Army Corps of Engineering project which involved damming this particular lake. The camping is beautiful,

the wind has picked up and kept us cool as we’ve sat by our fire eating beans and rice on tortillas and ending another day on our venture to our western shores.