Wednesday, June 20, ’12
H-88 Weatherford L H 68 L 56 RAIN M H 80 L 61 T-STORMS
L-72 C H 95 L 73
Bear update: The Bear says Oblarn Sounds Suspicious Party. TR says, “Helmut sounds like a pirate.” Moose say, “You sound more suspicious, Bear!” Lou says we will have a Nazi Pirate Party. We will serve Nazi Pirate Foods.
We woke up to sun. Will it last?
Tucson 105/71 Sulphur Springs 91/72 tomorrow Brooklyn 93/78
We woke up at 7:30AM. We got dressed and went to the CP in the lobby to pick up breakfast and bring it back to the room to eat. We got hot coffee, hot chocolate, hot tea, 3 orange juices, 3 sausages for the dog, and 6 small Danish. These bright side breakfasts have a generic similarity to each other. They all have scrambled eggs but nobody eats them. Even the sausage don’t look like there’s a rush to gobble them up. The rolls and cold cereal are what everybody eats. We left the motel at 10:32AM checking out of room 106. We stopped at the first rest area right outside Abilene. They didn’t have any place to park. Then we got back on 20 and continued down I-20. We decided not to stop in Cisco. It’s another one of those hopeless Texas rest areas with an antiquated Dairy Queen, a Sonic that has seen better days, and a Sabway probably inside a Stripes store. Now we’re looking to stop for lunch at the McDonalds in Eastland in another 9 miles. It promises to be a big place. It advertises truck parking. But really it turned out to have crowded parking just like everything in Texas. There were way too many people around here squeezing into too few facilities. We ate salads and checked our email. Somehow McDonalds seems too sophisticated and fancy for Texas. Gary makes a few cell phone calls. Then we hit the road again. Our A/C blower seems not to be working right. There’s something caught in it. Gary turned it off and on and we were good to go. We stopped at a Dairy Queen for ice cream. At least it looked letter than the one yesterday on the way to Abilene. We drove the rest of the way into Weatherford up to the La Quinta. We arrived at 2:26PM, which is early for this trip. But then we made only three pit stops today. We usually make twice that many or more. We have to wait half an hour to check into room 112. We go to get gas at Exxon next door, then returned to the motel to unload. Later we went to IHOP for dinner and gave Sabaka a bath.
Today is different. I’ve started to use the laptop in the car for the first time. I took it into the McDonalds at lunch. It helps to save time.
We drove on the ring road to get out of Abilene. The entryway to I-20 was poor. There was no dedicated entrance ramp. The on and off ramps were very short and shared. There were no signs marking the interstate until you actually reached the interstate. You had to already know where you were going. I wouldn’t want to do this at night. Somebody ought to force Texas to clean up its act. We’ve seen this sort of thing everywhere in Texas we’ve been so far. P.S. There was a four-way stop at the bottom of a very short exit ramp from I-20.
The Dog/Cat Report:

The Dog at the Dairy Queen: Sabaka loves grass. He hasn’t seen much of it in Tucson where he spends most of his time. There you usually have dirt and gravel, sometimes a tiny patch of much coveted grass. Up to now he’s seen grass primarily on vacation trips to Yosemite, Canada, or Oregon. Suddenly on this trip East he’s seeing more and more of it each day. He was lingering in a big patch of green right outside the Dairy Queen we just stopped at along I-20 right outside of Weatherford, Texas at exit 386. Gary had to practically drag the dog back to the car so he could go inside to eat his ice cream before finishing the trip for today and checking into the La Quinta in Weatherford.
The cat will like the cicadas in the trees and bushes outside. He’s a great fan of insects of all stripes. He will look forward to East Texas. The cat acts like he’s from Texas to begin with. He zooms around every morning in the motel room as if he’s riding a motorcycle. Probably with the lack of traffic regulation around here that’s what I will see next — a feline on a motorcycle.
Still no contract . . .
What next?