It was nice to leave overcast Dallas and get out on the road. I got lost on the Dallas freeways several times again. The GPS kept turning itself off. But eventually I found the correct freeway and then the highway north toward Amarillo. The weather turned out to be beautiful the further north I got. I guess Dallas was getting some of the rain from Hurricane Alex which hit northern Mexico that night.
The highway went through several rural cities and towns – some with populations as low as the 300s. It kind of felt I was going through the real Texas. Places such as Decatur, Rhome, Bowie, Clarendon, Quanah, Memphis (not the Tennesse one!), Childress and Claude. In one place I asked a girl in a restaurant for some ‘take away’ food and she seemed completely perplexed. After explaining I wanted to take the food with me she said ‘oh you mean “to go”‘ and had a little giggle at me. About three quarters of the way there I needed to get petrol so I pulled into a ‘gas station’. When I looked at the pump I couldn’t work out how to use it. So I asked a lady on the other side of the pump and she admitted she didn’t usually come to this station and she didn’t know either. Together we worked it out with a queue of cars forming behind us. The lady asked where I was from and said we had cute accents!