Day 1 is done…in the books so to speak. Over 350+ miles today primarily on 287. I’ve also just discovered that the camera I was using to take some cool pics on the road uses a memory stick and not an SD card. Argh!! I don’t have the adapter with me for the memory stick so no pics tonight.

In terms of the trip, the traffic was fairly light and we were able to make good time. Pretty much the 6 hours that google maps suggested it would take. I left my house at 7:02am and we rolled into the hotel parking lot around 1:30. This included a couple of stops for lunch and one for gas. That is fairly uncommon for us as we normally stop about every 100-120 miles. Today we pushed that to close to 160-180 miles before stopping. Basically 7:20-9:30 straight driving.

Lunch was at the Dairy Queen in Childress. This particular DQ had plenty of senior citizens partaking of the DQ offerings. Nothing wrong with that. A few other travelers also stopped in for a quick bite before getting back out on the rode. We knew they were travelers because we ended up passing them later on down the road.

Once we got to west Texas, the scenery definitely flattened out. You can see for miles out here. We saw one windmill farm churning out electricity and an entire new set of high voltage wiring being setup. We also saw about 3 coal trains. A coal train is exactly what it sounds like. Cars full of coal being pulled south. Not sure where they come from or where they were going, but each of them was anywhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a mile long. Very long trains!!

We also saw plenty of highway patrol although we did not get the opportunity to meet any of them in person. Thankfully the radar detector was working and saved us a couple of times.

Our average speed today was up around 82-87 mph. Speed limits out here are 75, so we pushed it a little to get past trucks and other slow moving traffic.

Once we got to Amarillo, we unloaded the bikes and sat down for a bit. We then decided to go see the movie Star Trek Into Darkness in iMax 3D. The picture and sound were incredible. When explosions occurred, the seat actually rumbled from the volume of low bass the sound system was pumping out. Great movie!! Better than the first one (relative term as the first one is actually number 11).

After the movie, we made our way over to the Big Texan to eat steak. Although I did consider the 72oz steak challenge, I decided that the better course would be to order a small rib-eye. Yummy, good choice. After that, headed back to the hotel, showered and am ready for tomorrow. We leave early so updates when I can!!

Here is a map for day 1: