I left for my month-long road trip yesterday and drove from Dallas to Amarillo.
In true Sam fashion, I started packing 40 minutes before I was to leave. Naturally, I’m sure I’ve forgotten everything. Or that I packed everything. There is no in-between.
It’s funny how I stocked the back of my car nearly full with a bunch of ‘what if’ items. I just spent two months abroad with just a smallish backpack, but this trip is a little different.
Over the next four weeks, I’ll road trip solo through mountains and the plains, sleep in a tent, hotels, and friends’ homes, and attend nights out, professional soirees, and go hiking. There is no easy way to pack for this one!
The Drive
As I said, I started my trip this morning. I left Dallas at 10:05 and arrived in Amarillo at 4ish. Along the way, I went about 10 miles out of my way to visit Medicine Mound, Texas. It’s a ghost town, which was crazy to see. There were abandoned buildings and not a person or car or building in sight!
I got out and took a few photos (self-timer is such a godsend to solo traveling). Then, I headed on my way to Amarillo. It was a nice halfway point stop that didn’t add more than 15 minutes on to my total travel time.
In Amarillo
I couch-surfed last night and got to Amarillo before my host got off work. That gave me time to go to the grocery store to get bananas for breakfast and decided to relax at a local brewery and get some writing done.
When my couch host got home, we spent the evening visiting the Cadillac Ranch – some rich guy planted a bunch of Cadillacs out in the desert and people go there to spray paint them. Then we went to the VW Graveyard – a similar concept but with VW’s at the origination point of Route 66.
It was super cool to see the starting point of such an iconic piece of American history. I’m so stoked for all the other adventures that this trip brings!
