Driving Notes, Day 1

Hit the road at 9:30am, destination: Amarillo, TX. Robert drove for
five hours. Stopping once to eat tabouli salad and cheesey crackers.
Then I drove for three hours, my first time pulling a trailer. We
listened almost exclusively to Eragon.

We found our campsite easily, we had been here only a month before
when we drove to Boulder, CO. This time was a little different. It was
a Saturday night and the public land was being used by swarms of
ATV/dune buggy/dirt bike riders. They are loud and hard on the land
(broken beer bottles and trash everywhere). Last time we got away from
them by driving deep into the area and camping beyond in less
adulterated land. This time, however, we are driving a Uhaul van,
pulling my car on a trailer, not the best for offroading, but we did
it anyways. The road was hard packed for a while, but soon devolved
into loose sand drifts. We decided to stop. No, that isn't completely
accurate. The sand drift decided we should stop ans when we didn't
listen, it surged up around our tires and made us stop. (Robert got us
totally and helplessly stuck.)

Here would be a great place to insert picture of our rig, mired in the
sand, but thankfully, a knight in shining armor driving a giant white
steed almost immediately rendered assistance. He had us out and on our
way (deeper into the sand trap) in five minutes. He even followed us
to a place where we could turn around and then continued following us
until we got back to the highway. Thank you, man in giant white
truck!!

At this point it was dark and we were parked in an utterly uncampable
situation. We did heat up some dinner to boost moral and it was tasty,
minus the moths that insisted on going for a swim. I really wanted to
just camp right there, but then a car pulled off the highway into our
"campsite" and the man walked to his back bumper and urinated at us.
(In his defense, we were eating our curry dinner in the dark, so maybe
he didnt know we were there.) I did make sure to turn my headlamp on
as he was pulling away to alert him to his blunder, but I'm doubtful
he cared.

Robert set himself to locating a new campsite and actually did an
excellent job. We had to drive to the other side of Lake Meredith (no
water), but we had the place to ourselves and it was clean. We ended
up camping in the parking lot because We missed the camping area sign
in the dark, but it was perfect anyways.

I woke at moonrise, blind, and very confused as to what the giant
glowing orb was, but soon enough I slept like the dead. The perfection
of our campsite was further proven when we awoke to a chorus of birds
serenading us. We walked down to the marsh/lake and noticed it was
perfect red winged blackbird habitat. They were multitudinous. We
broke the fast with bran flakes and yogurt and strawberries and all
were forgiven for getting us stuck in the sand.

(other wildlife sightings: pronghorn antelope, roadrunner, shrike)