Next Stop… Amarillo, Texas.

After another good night sleep at Super 8 Motel in Yukon,Oklahoma we continue on I-40 towards Amarillo, Texas.Since we entered the state of Tennessee, by noon hour it has been so incredibly hot while driving the interstates. Toget an idea of how hot it is, take a hair drier, turn it on full blast and point it towards your face. Believe me… It´s not much different. This is what we are up against in the mid south USA. That's why the leather over alls haven´t seen the light of day since Route 66. After around 150kms we reach the Texas state line. This is by all means, real Cowboy country. Cattle or Steersare everywhere in the enormous dusty plains and fields. They are all looking for a piece of shade or if possible, a water hole they can stand in the middle of. We make a quick stop for gas and while standing by the bike. This car pulls up beside us. I get a glimpse of a cat in the back seat moving towards a parrot sitting perched up by the rear window. Then there´s another cat sitting beside an even bigger Parrot. These cats are the strangest cats I´ve ever seen. Not because they were friends with the parrots but because they were Hairless. They were called Sphinx cats. A very rare breed. Km reached for her camera and the young man stepped out of the car with the parrot and gave it to her, took her camera and took a picture. He then got one of the cats so we could get a better look at them. Wow , that was a real surprise. I of course had my video rolling for this as well. He was a young kid heading for California with his babies where he would be studying to be a veterinarian.

We reach Amarillo at 1pm and take a break for lunch at J Flyer. Been there twice and I´ll explain that later. We had lunch and when we were finished, Km wanted to browse in the gift shop a few minutes. She found herself a nice sun hat and asked me what I thought. My first thought was if she had room for it. She said she did so I told her it´s her vacation. It wasn´t long before it too was attached to the bike. We decided to head north on route 87/287 towards the State of Colorado. These 90 kms from Amarillo to Dumas, was a wake-up call to how enormous the United States is. As far as the eye could see there was absolutely nothing. Flat and dusty and one or two mounds of hills in the VERY far distance. It was quite an experience to see absolutely nothing except for the horizon in the far background. My dear cousin Michael and his wife Leah wanted us to visit theirhome at the very bottom of Texas. I can see it now. Tourists stopping to take pictures of two dried up skeletons laying beside a 1996 Honda Shadow Vt 1100 somewhere in the vast State of Texas. Now I know why they invented planes.

As we are halfway to Dumas, I´m thinking that it was pretty silly that we didn´t have any water with us just in case of an emergency. I was afraid to say this to Karen M. She´d probably lift her arms to both sides while saying Waaahhhh!! Then she would worry about that until we reached our destination. We arrived in Dumas, Texas at 4pm and decided to call it a day. It would be nice to relax in a motel early for a change. I could then use the time to catch up on my diary. The Gps found us another Super 8 motel. We decided to take it. Its still 38 degrees plus, so sleeping in a tent is still an impossibility.While I pay the bill with my credit card, I hear in the background… Waaahhhh !!!! It was Km tearing everything out of her backpack and wallet. Her Master card seemed to be missing.She then remembered talking with the lady she paid the hat for back in Amarillo. She just didn´t remember taking her card again. We had the motel phone the restaurant to see if they had the card. To our luck they did. I showed Km to our room, emptied the luggage from the bike and I left Km in the air conditioned room and returned the 90 kms through the desert on a bike with no name to Amarillo. Picked up her card and 2½ hours later I returned to the motel. Karen-Margrethe will be dancing for me tonight… And she can keep her Hat on !!! Unfortunately/fortunately our camera doesn´t seem to be working properly the last two days so there won´t be any pictures. Funny enough, it hasn´t worked properly since I dropped it. This red arrow thing keeps appearing and while talking to a camera man in Wal Mart, he says it´s telling us that the flash is broken. We end up buying a new Olympus 12 Mega-pixels camera for 139 dollars(900kr). When we get back to the motel, we transfer all the pictures from the memory card onto the computer. While looking over the pictures we come to one of an antilope or perhaps a deer running beside the road. I asked her why she never mentioned that because I myself never saw it. It turned out that this was the first time she saw it as well.

Next day we headed northwest on route 87/64 and cut across the NE corner of New Mexico. Once again we traveled through endless miles of dusty prairies. Enormously fascinating to see. The region is gradually changing as we come closer to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.We talk with this lady at a gas station… yes this is where we happen to receive most ofour travel information. The best guides are the local people. She says we have to see the dinosaur tracks at the state park and the Capulin Volcano. Apparently you can drive up to the top to witness an amazing view of the State. Unfortunately we drive past the dinosaur place without knowing but reach the Capulin Volcano State Park. Ipull out my State park pass provided by my son and Katrine and present it to the lady who looks at it and wishes us a pleasant drive up. Only have a bit of video from up there because we forgot to charge the battery. Two batteries were deadand one missing. That´s life I suppose. Well worth the trip up there. We got back on track and about 3kms from Walsenburg, Colorado, we call it a day due to a storm brewing just ahead. We did stop on the highway to take our rain clothes on but it turned out to be a waste of time.We turned off the highway and made our way to Anchor Motel, 1001 Main St. Walsenburg. Not one of the better ones but it had air conditioning.

Our plan the next day was to head north to about mid Colorado and then east until we were in the middle. This would be Gunnison County.We would be traveling along Hwy 50 which cuts Colorado in half. What I didn´t know is that this was what they call the Colorado Great Divide. We took the more scenic route to hwy 50 via 165 N to 96 W to 69 N which then ran into hwy 50. Out of no where in the middle of the forest we come across a Stone Castle. There is a man who has devoted his last 35 years in building this magnificent castle, stone by stone. Truly an amazing accomplishment. It is open to the public if you sign the guest book freeing him of any problems if you hurt yourself. Enter at own risk sort of thing. He does of course accept donations to the building project. We remained outside due to all the motorcycle gear we had on. We also found a real live cowboy town by the name of Silver Cliff on Hwy 96 just before Salida. It was in the middle of a Valley with mountains on either side.It was an old Miner´s Town. You almost expected to see John Wayne ride into town and get some lunch at the local saloon where we ate. We also saw an older couple come out of a store and they both had Oxygen bottles on wheels. We both concluded that it was because they were both working in the mines way back when. Then out of another store came one more with Oxygen. We found out later when we asked the waitress about it. Shetold us that they don´t produce enough oxygen themselves and at this altitude they need the bottles. So much for our theory. We reached Salida just past noon hour where we met to young guys who were on a walk across some trail in the mountains. Only 450 kms and they counted on being finished in three weeks. Give me a motorcycle anytime. We decided to take the last leg to our destination. This was over the Monarch Pass. Didn´t really realize that it was so high up. We were warned to be careful of the transport trucks who seem to think they own the pass. What a climb to the top. I had to gear down several times to make it up. At that altitude, the gas to air mixture is very weak. This means no horsepower. Before I realized this I´ve got my throttle at full and started to think there was something wrong with my bike. I was a little concerned but we did reach the top at 11,312 feet. We had no choice but to go into the gift shop to find some sort of sticker which says we were here. That we did find and I asked if they had any raccoon hats. They did but they weren´t real. He pointed us in the direction of the hats and we went over to check them out. The raccoon hats did look fake but they had another type which did LOOK real with a flat fox head on the top. While Km is checking out the hat, she takes it up to her nose and starts to smell it saying that the hat smells rotten. I couldn´t help smiling while trying to explain to her that I was sorry but I just farted. She then dropped that hat and walked away. We descended from the top down to about 7500 feet above sea leveland found our way to Blue Mesa Campground by the Blue Mesa Water Reservoir. Here we will spend a few days doing absolutely nothing. How nice is that. We checked in and we were shown the direction as to where the tents sites were located. There were about 10. This was more or less a RV Campground. The price was only 10dollars/night and 2 dollars/ with internet so we were pretty happy campers. We knew we would be far from the main town of Gunnison (approx. 20kms) so we did a little gourmet shopping at the local Safeway food mart. Tonight´s menu was Kraft Dinner (original) with tuna. Like it or lump it. Funny how everything tastes good when you spend the whole day outside. Wewent for a little stroll around the camp after dinner to check it out.

Gunnison which was another Cowboy town where having a Rodeo week they called "Cattlemans days". We thought about attending but it didn´t seem to fit into our plans. We went to bed pretty early that night and what a cold night it was. We actually froze our butts off. This whole area of the states is pretty high up. Blue Mesa is around the 7000 feet above sea level. The next day Km decided she wanted to do absolutely nothing and just relax. I was so far behind in diary that I would use the time for this so I packed the computer and headed up to the main office to use their electricity. The time was 10:30 in the morning and at 3pm Karen M came up to see what happened to me. I was just finished and up to date once again. Nice…We decided to head into town. We were thinking about the rodeo but decided just to look around town and then go out to eat. Found a nice little Steak House and they prepared a fine meal. Walkeda little around town and the returned to base camp and went early to bed. We couldn´t wait to start freezing. We got up at 6am which turned out to be 7am. Yes , another time zone we forgot to keep track of. This time it only took us two days to find out. Our next stop would be somewhere in Utah. Not really sure what Utah has to offer, but time will tell. From what I know, the most fascinating things in Utah are at the southern end.Its going to be good because we have no expectations… We can´t be disappointed.