The wind shut us down !!!

By Mary

We hit the road this morning with the goal of getting to Gallup, NM which was about 400 miles from our overnight stop. Unfortunately Hurricane Paul had other ideas…..this is a rare Pacific hurricane and the winds from Paul have reached inland as far as New Mexico. We have mentioned several times that high winds are very difficult to travel in while pulling a trailer. So at 10:30 this morning our travel day was done. We only made it 90 miles to Tucumcari. That’s OK…we have plenty of time and we are on vacation and driving in that wind is just too dangerous. Apparently other RV travelers feel the same, this RV park is filling up fast.

So now we are at an RV park with cable TV and a very slow internet connection. So the first thing I am interested in is what do we have around to make for supper. Looking in the cupboard, I spotted SPAM…OK..OK we bought more than one can. So then I looked in the SPAM cook book. OK….OK …I bought a $3.00 SPAM cook book at the SPAM museum. Anyway I looked through it trying to find a recipe that Rex would like. Bingo…we are having SPAM Swiss Pie. Some of the ingredients are heavy cream, Swiss cheese, and 6 eggs, oh and of course SPAM!! For dessert sour cream apple pie!! This should be an interesting supper!

Since we had a plan for supper, we needed to make a trip to the grocery store. Driving in a new place we always look for a place for an afternoon cocktail, but in Tucumcari that is a tough assignment. Actually we saw one right away, but when we went back to it the door was boarded up. The main drag (historic Route 66) of Tucumcari has a lot of boarded up businesses…it looks kind of sad! But we are persistent and were rewarded with the Lizard Lounge. If the wind keeps up like it is suppose to and keeps us off the road tomorrow, we will get to know the bartender quite well!!

The weather has also made it necessary to change some of our other plans. We originally planned to go to Monument Valley and to hike down into the Grand Canyon, but forecasted nighttime temps in the teens has made us rethink that plan. So our new plan is a visit to The Painted Desert, Petrified National Forest, and a meteor crater. Not a bad substitution in my opinion!!