On to Livingston, TX by Von

So we continued through Wyoming to spend the night at Laramie, WY. I always thought the Laramie was a made up town name for all the old westerns that I watched on TV when I was young, but there really is a Laramie. I wasn’t that impressed, remember, I don’t like Wyoming’s landscape at all. We drove through Colorado straight through on Highway 25. I am trying to collect a key chain from every state that we find ourselves in. We had driven through Utah on this trip and only stopped a couple of times for breaks and food and I didn’t pick up a key chain from that state. We were through it before I realized. So, when we were getting close to the Colorado, New Mexico border I was panicing because I hadn’t gotten my key chain for Colorado yet. I was fortunate enough to find a convenience store that had Colorado key chains and I was able to get one. Whew, I almost missed out on that state too. We drove through the corner of New Mexico in the dark, so I have no idea what that state’s landscape is like. But that’s okay, because we are going to go back through it on our way to Arizona later in October (hopefully in the day time). It took Greg, Bentley and me 5 days to get to Texas. We drove into Dalhart, Texas about 12:30AM central time after driving all day (about 12 hours). We treated ourselves to a stay in a motel room for the night since we had driven so much that day. Dalhart, TX is definitely a cow town. The stench of the cattle were making me sick to my stomach and the flies were everywhere!! Greg and I originally were going to take care of getting our residency paperwork done in Dalhart, TX but changed our minds after spending the night. We looked at the map and decided to drive on to Livingston, TX where our mailing address is. That added 2 more days of driving, but now that we are here, we are happy we did the drive. The area has lots of trees and isn’t too bad. It is hot, hot still, but at least it isn’t raining! The hurricane Ike came through this town a couple of weeks ago and it is really interesting to see the damage that it caused. There are several roofs and signs missing and a lot of piles of branches on the side of the road, and there are some uprooted trees lying around. I’m glad that we came here now and not a couple of weeks ago! Now we need to get our vehicles registered, our drivers licenses and our voter registrations changed to our Texas residence. When we get all of this business taken care of we then are going to drive across Texas and New Mexico and on to Arizona to meet up with Greg’s brother and sister for a week or two.

I’ve learned something with driving this far. When I drove 75 miles an hour the Jetta got 41 gallons to the mile. When I drove 60 miles an hour following Greg, the Jetta got 53 miles to the gallon. I now follow Greg looking at his shiney rear end all the way.