10.99, blown away, wall to wall
So we headed out for a town we never heard of in New Mexico called Tucumcari. As we left Wichita I was on the hunt for a post card. I jokingly told my one buddy from work I would send him a postcard from Kansas. Well I thought it would be funny if I actually did it. However there was one problem, I couldn’t find any. I stopped at least a half dozen places looking for postcards and struck out every time. I guess Kansas isn’t much of a tourist trap. However as we drove along I saw sign for a place called Greensburg “Home of the BIG Well” Surely they had to have post cards.
So we pull into Greensburg and comment on how sparse everything looked. We pulled up to the location of the vaunted BIG Well (world’s largest hand dug well) and all that was there was a small little shed and not a whole lot else but some bare concrete and debris. I looked down the shaft of 
the well and confirmed it was indeed pretty big. We went into the gift shop to score our postcards. As I looked around I saw lots of inspirational slogans about rebuilding, starting over etc… I asked the girl behind the counter “Was this place hit by a tornado or something?” “Yes in 2007, it leveled the entire town” Wow. The older woman at the store actually went through the nightmare and described it in detail. The tornado was a mile and a half wide (that is a picture of it to the left) and it killed 12 people. She started flipping through several books they had there that documented the event.
I felt like a bit of a tool not realizing why everything looked so sparse. Literally almost every single building in the town was destroyed. The town however has taken a great attitude coming out of the disaster. They are viewing it as an opportunity to start over and rebuild the infrastructure using modern, energy efficient methods like wind and solar power. It was inspirational to hear the pride in the women’s voices as they talked about the future. Wow all I wanted was a couple postcards and instead we wound up walking into something entirely unexpected. We hopped back in the van both dumbstruck that we stumbled across Greensburg. As we drove out we actually noticed that any buildings that were around were either trailers or brand new construction.
Ali took over driving for a little while once we got into Oklahoma. I settled into the back and was watching a movie on my Iphone. A little later Ali waved at me to look out the window. I pulled up the blind and saw just a wall of black. I didn’t know what it was. “What is it”? I yelled up. “Cows” Ali said, obviously distraught. We were driving by these huge fenced in areas of cattle. They were packed together so tight in some spots that it was hard to make out one from another. The stench of cow shit filled the van from the animals that had no choice but to stand in piles of their own shit. It instantly made me very sad and made me feel like a participant in their miserable existence due to my being part of the human race that demands that livestock be cultivated in such a manner. We saw a couple of these along the way. It’s easy to make a choice to eat meat when you don’t see the process required to get it to you.
I resumed watching my movie, trying to not dwell on what we just saw. As I laid there I noticed that the van was constantly downshifting. I assumed Ali was either driving too fast or was just being up and down on the gas pedal. After awhile I got annoyed as I knew this would kill the gas mileage and I yelled up to Ali asking her what was wrong. She said there was an incredible head and cross wind and she was trying to keep the van up to speed. I saw she had a death grip on the wheel so I told her to pull over and I would drive again. Since I drove all day yesterday she was hesitant to ask for relief duty but I told her it was fine.
When we stopped to switch we stepped outside so I could take a leak by a tree. Wow it was gale force winds. I’d have to guess they were close to 40 mph gusts with a steady 30+. Once I got behind the steering wheel I saw why the van was downshifting. As soon as it would try to go into over drive the force of the head wind would knock the speed right down. The wind knocking the van around didn’t make me as nervous as it did Ali so it was a good thing I took over.
As we crossed over the New Mexico state line we gained another hour as we moved on to Mountain Standard time. We arrived in Tucumcari a little after 5 local time. The town looked very small and old. I did not expect the La Quinta to be much of anything. Ali said the place was brand new. Well we had a pleasant surprise when we pulled up. The hotel was fantastic and only open for business 3 weeks. It was the nicest La Quinta yet out of the 5 we have stayed out thus far. I would have never thunk it.
So today we have a relatively short 5 or 6 hour drive into my dad’s place. Internet access will be slim to none probably so I may be out of the loop until our journey back begins next week.