Amarillo for the night

Odometer 46107 miles

Trip Meter 231 miles

Saturday March 28, 2015

Amarillo, Texas

Each travel day starts out with many of the same routines.

Wichita Bend RV Park

The front of the motorhome is what we call the flyswatter, and boy does it do the job!  We use a product called RV Wash which is a rinseless wash that keeps us in the good graces of the RV park owners.  I can do what we call a "bucket wash" where I use a long handle brush or a microfiber towel, along with a bucket of water with a tablespoon of wash concentrate.  Scrub off the fiberglass and dry it with at squeege or microfiber towel.  A quick coat of polish an we're ready for another day of bug catching.

We are on our way northeast on US 287 again today; heading for Amarillo.  This area is almost exclusively agriculture (with a few oil wells thrown in).  We were wondering what the acres and acres of this bright yellow crop is.  We decide it must be rapeseed.

Phillips 76 Station  Childress, TX

 We were on the look-out for a good place to buy fuel for the motorhome when Joan spotted this sign.
HOLY COW! $2.09 a gallon for diesel!!
Did we see that correctly?  I come to a stop in the middle of the street as we try to figuire out if this is a hoax of some kind.
Did they just make a mistke posting the prices this morning?

I'm blocking the road while I try to take this in-  Let's find out- I truned into the pumps and Joan got out to look at the pump face to see what the price is on the pump.

While we are fueling, a young man drives in with a diesel pickup and hops out looking at us he says - is this really the price?  He lives in the area and was heading to work looking to fill up on the way.  He told us Walmart up the road was $2.59 and he was kind of tempted at that price.
This is unreal!

Yep- that says $2.099-  Yeah!  We can't believe our eyes (or luck)  We took on 58 gallons of the cheapest diesel we have purchased since we started keeping records in 2004.

A short time later we pass this sign at a Valero gas station- uh-huh...

South Fifth Steet Memphis, Texas

I mentioned that US 287 goes through each small town- well I decided I liked the look of Memphis (population 2300) and turned down a side street to see more.  The streets are laid brick,  very smooth with crisp straight lines, giving the town a neat curb appeal.

Hall County Courthouse Memphis, TX

Memphis was platted in 1890 and soon sported a law office, a rooming house, general store and drug store.  The town had no name for a while- several names were submitted and rejected by the USPS.  One of the town residents happened to be in another post office and saw a letter mis-addressed to Memphis, Texas and the hand written notation "no such town in Texas"  The town submitted the name Memphis and the rest is history.

We arrived at our destination, the AOK RV Park just outside of Amarillo.  The park is a Passport Affilliate making our space rent  just $12 for the night.  The park was nothing special, however they had pull-throughs with full hook-ups and it was reasonably clean.  We didn't have to unhook the car.  I washed the front of the bus and took some of the crust off the tires and wheels.  As I was finishing up the last tire/ wheel, a cute little puppy wandered over to play.

Joan and I took a 2 mile walk up Jack Rabbit Road outside the RV park, before turning in for the night.  I spotted this old sign during our walk, and just liked the colors and the setting
.
Tomorrow we will push on toward Albuquerque NM and from there up route 550 to Bloomfield.  We had originally intended to take US87 out of Amarillo up to New Mexico 64, but our friend Mark Lankford  convinced us that it was pretty risky this early in the spring.  After looking at the Mountain Directory West we agreed.  The directory shows all the mountain passes on each highway and 64 has some very high passes.

Your Traveling Friends

Jeff and Joan