The Move: Day 3

Update is posted late because of no wireless in hotel last night.

Day 3 Statistics:
Total Miles Traveled: 607 miles
Overall average speed: 57.9 mph
Moving average speed: 59.4 mph

Today, we started with a nice breakfast at Comfort Inn, and got on the road at around 9am. Not bad given how tough the prior few days had been on us! We felt well-rested and ready to get the first full day of the road trip started.

Most of the day was uneventful. We had lunch at Cracker Barrell in Gallup, New Mexico, which tasted freaking fantastic after the debacle in Black Canyon City yesterday. I drove until we got past Amarillo, at which point Jen took over driving. And what better way to get your first taste of driving a 26’ moving truck then to immediately drive into a rainstorm? It was pouring cats and dogs within a mile, but Jen did great and was almost immediately comfortable.

For dinner, we stopped in Tucumcari. Approaching the exit, we saw a billboard for McDonalds that said "Best Service in town". That should've been a sign to us to keep on going and not stop. We first decided to stop at a Chinese restaurant. We walked in and the restaurant was completely empty except for the hostess/waitress and one customer standing at the front desk waiting for his order. The hostess immediately sat us with menus and then we waited. We could see her from where we were sitting and she kept getting calls for delivery orders and who knows what else. After about 20 minutes without even giving our drink order and we noticed at least 3 other orders were going to the kitchen before we'd get a chance to place ours, we just got up and left. After that experience, we knew we wanted something quick because it was already around 8pm and we were losing daylight quickly with about 2.5 more hours of driving left. So we stopped at Pizza Hut. We went to the front counter and stood in line for a bit then realized they had servers at the tables so we sat down. Then we waited. Finally, we went back up to the counter and placed our order up there. Then we waited. About 25 minutes later (when he told us the pizza would take 15 minutes) Jen went back up to the counter to check and see how it was coming. After a few minutes, Jen interrupted the conversation between the waitresses just hanging out there and after acting majorly inconvenienced, one of them turned to look at the kitchen and there was no pizza there waiting. So then she just started chatting with another employee and we decided to leave. Finally, we walked across the parking lot to A&W for quick burgers so we could get back on the road. If you are ever passing through Tucumcari, TX just keep on driving!

By the time we got back on the road it was after 9pm and it was dark outside. We drove for a bit and then we saw a cop who pulled us over. There was one sign when we entered the state about trucks having a lower speed limit than cars, but no other truck was following it so we were just keeping up with traffic. Plus, it was only one sign. Luckily, that wasn't the reason we were pulled over. The cop notified us that one of our headlights was burnt out. He left us off with a warning and we were only about 15 minutes from Amarillo which was our destination, so we continued on.

We had picked up a brochure at one of our stops along the way with some hotel coupons. We decided to give the Fifth Seasons Inn a shot. They had rooms advertised for $38/night with a free Hot breakfast. The picture in the coupon looked nice too. The main hotel was very nice, however the rooms at the $38/night rate were the ones in the adjoining motel at the back of the building. It was kind of deceiving. We approached our room and the door was ajar. That really freaked Jen out. In addition to the hallway room, there was also a door to the outside as well as a door to the adjoining room. The room was very old and not the nicest we've seen.