The Six Car Pub & Brewery is in a section of downtown Amarillo that appears to be sort of an up and coming, kind of trendy little area. It may have felt different in some of the other spots, but this felt friendly, fun and unpretentious. We had a little bit of a wait, but it wasn't long before we were seated.
This place had a pretty extensive beer and cider menu. David tried several things, but I stuck with an apple and pineapple hard cider.
I didn't get a pic of everyone's food, but Sam really enjoyed her pizza.
They were more than willing to customize a few of their menu options for my dietary needs. I didn't get a pic of the brisket hash I ordered, but this is the hummus plate that I shared with Kendall. The green in there is some kind of spicy chili...hatch, maybe?
When we went to pay for the meal, David's card was rejected. It was an odd error message, so he thought it was a fluke. I told him he needed to call, but either way...I had to pay for the meal.
When we got back to the room, we had the kids settle in for bed...which sparked the sleeping arrangement debate. As some of you may recall, David snores. I was willing to sleep in the living room on the pull out couch, but David wanted to watch the rest of JJ Watt hosting SNL, so he let me have the other bed in the bedroom and he took the couch. So sweet!
February 2
I think like most people, I never sleep well on the road. I woke up several times during the night, but it was just because I knew we still had a number of hours of driving ahead of us into areas that aren't heavily populated. It wasn't the same as the irrational fears I expressed over the summer with driving into Rangely, CO. It was just more of a "where am I going to get gas" kind of fear. Oh well, at least I got some sleep. I did get up to see some of sunrise before getting back under the covers for an hour or two. We actually had the luxury of sleeping in a bit today since we were going from central time to mountain time, I think it was only between 3-4 hours to Red River and check in wasn't until 3pm.
Once we all finally did get up, we packed up and headed downstairs to grab some breakfast. The elevator said peak hours were between 8:30am-10:30am...which basically is all of breakfast. It actually had me a little worried...until we got there and there were tons of empty tables.
Oh well, I rather it be quiet over packed. At least it was kind of interesting decor scheme.
After breakfast, we got the bags from the room and hit the road. The first objective was to get gas. We figured we'd see something as we headed out of town, but the closer we got...the more we started to realize that there was nothing. Even the CVS I was hoping to go to for Sam (she was starting to feel sick) was closed. So, we stayed on the city loop and went back to the interstate on the other side of the city where we finally found gas. It's a good thing we did because as soon as we exited the loop to start making our way to NM... there was NOTHING!
It started to remind me of driving to Rangely, CO nothing, but we would eventually go through a variety of little towns and see farms here at there. In other words, there were more signs of life. David laughed at me over the summer with the Rangely stuff, but this time, even he got the post-apocalyptic vibe that I tend to get in these quiet areas. Obviously, the few people we did encounter in these little areas were very nice...it's just a different way of life. Different...not better...or worse.
As we drove the TX panhandle, I think we all had this "Texas is going on forever" kind of feeling, but when we crossed into Texline, TX, I knew we were finally about to leave the Lone Star State. We went through a town right after crossing into NM, but then we turned off for another highway and there was more nothing...well, until the terrain started to change.
And if my map reading is correct, the snowy mountains in that pic up above are in Colorado. I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure that's the range we saw when we were in Alamosa (near Great Sand Dunes) over the summer. We were only a little over an hour away from this spot when we were in Red River. David also saw some pronghorn in here, but the rest of us saw nothing.
Something funny also happened around this time. I was passed by a commercial pick up truck and a Nissan Armada. The pickup didn't register with me, but the Armada had a community sticker from the town where we live. We'd driven all this way to be behind people from our town! We'd eventually part ways since we each stopped at different points after this. Speaking of stopping...we stopped to get some sodas and David's card was declined again. So, it was now looking like he was going to have to call his bank.
The next cool thing happened when we drove into Cimarron, NM. On the map, I just saw it as the last town we'd drive through before heading into the mountains, but as we drove in, we saw a sign for the Philmont Scout Ranch. My husband was a Boy Scout growing up...all the way to the rank of Eagle Scout. He went to Philmont twice as a boy and I'd heard various things from him about it. He was a kid, so he never really knew where they were in NM, but either way...it was his first time back in this area since then.
After leaving the town of Cimarron, we entered Cimarron Canyon State Park.
It was pretty, but this is also where even David got concerned. It was fine in dry conditions and didn't seem to have a lot of steep drop offs or switch backs, but the uphill/downhill in some spots could be pretty scary in bad conditions.
I knew we were at a higher elevation and continuing to climb, but this bag of Ruffles proved that point.
I guess the bag continued to inflate as we got higher. We laughed about it at first, but a few minutes later, we heard this big BOOM! The pressure got to be too much and the bag burst. I've never experienced this! We'd later notice that the bags of coffee in our hotel room had this same kind of inflated appearance. It makes me wonder how many grocery bags burst making their way up to these parts.
After we got out of the park, we entered a much more wintry looking atmosphere. We'd seen a little bit of snow along the road before this, but this looked like winter.
And it wasn't long before we were heading down into the Red River ski valley.
If you take a good look at that picture, it's a pretty decent downhill drive at this point. I know David shifted into low gear for pretty much all of it. This picture...while not really capturing what I was trying to photograph...would come in handy later on for some judgement calls.
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Coming up- Check in and early exploration
