Day 38 (A Travel day) Santa Fe, NM - Amarillo, TX 278.3 miles, New Total = 7,438.4 miles
Yesterday was a long day and a long post, but I didn't take the time to talk about the Albuquerque Balloon Festival which was going on all last week. We found this out on our way to santa Fe and decided to find a way to go.  When we arrived Thurs. afternoon the weather in Santa Fe was overcast and windy and upon checking the TV channel for Albuquerque, we found out that the evenings activities were cancelled due to wind. The forecast for the morning was worse with rain, wind & thunderstorms predicted. We decided to wait until Saturday.  They were in fact cancelled Friday morning (rain & lightning) and Friday evening (wind).  After our adventure with rain & hail & wind late friday afternoon and the forecast of storms throughout the evening, we were very skeptical about Sat. AM.  The forecast called for light but increasing winds and the morning ascension was still in doubt.  After much discussion, we opted to forego the Festival and move on to Amarillo. (It was 65 miles the opposite direction and we doubted we we could do that and our scheduled drive comfortably in the one day.)
 The drive to Amarillo was basically interstate most of the way.  The scenery was trucks, trains & mostly flat open spaces.

Welcome back to the interstate

We did see some interesting adobe houses before we left New Mexico.

a nice adobe1

Jan did a 10 minute truck count and got 45 trucks in the westbound lane.  I multiplied this by two to account for the eastbound lane we were on, and then by six to get the amount per hour. This says there were probably over 500 trucks passing this point in one hour. It made sense based on our observations.
Long trains (too long to count) were also quite in evidence.  Many were double decker container trains with well over 50 cars.

...one of many westbound trains

I know this is kind of boring, but driving the interstate is!  Oh yeah, we did see a lot of cattle dispersed throughout these open spaces, and one stockyard close to the highway that we found out the hard way really stunk!!  Upon opening the side window to take a picture, we were blasted with a horrendous aroma, and it smelled more like an open sewer more than a normal manure aroma.

stockyard!

The day was very windy, luckily on our backs as we were driving, but at lunch and when we arrived at the campground, it was pretty much intolerable to sit out.  Jan set down her sandwich and unpeeled banana on a paper plate and before she could sit down to eat it, the wind blew it off the table onto the ground.  Our KOA for the night was just beyond the center of the city and close to the airport (quite common) and a major rail line with a couple of road crossings close by.  (we heard no less than a dozen  trains during the night, announcing their passing with 5 whistle blasts)  Luckily I grew up next to the tracks so it quickly became just background noise.