| We woke up this morning in our Days Inn hotel room in Rayville, 
			Louisiana, after a long drive yesterday. On our agenda for today was 
			to complete our trek through Louisiana and Texas, with the intent to 
			get as close to Clovis, New Mexico as possible. After waking up and 
			getting showered, we got a fresh start on our drive, heading out to 
			refuel at the Pilot Travel Center just down the road from the hotel. 
			We had gone almost 210 miles on this tank of gas. Not bad! Our 
			first stop of the day came at 10:00am, to grab a quick breakfast for 
			Tyler at a McDonald's in Waskom, Texas. Neither Drew or I are big 
			fans of McDonald's breakfasts - well, let me say we both like the 
			hash browns, but they can wreak havoc on our digestive systems, and 
			that's a risk that just can't be taken when on a road trip! 
			Our second gas stop of the day came around noon, and was our 
			longest stretch of the trip so far - almost 250 miles! We pulled in 
			to the Circle K just outside of Canton, Texas. We also grabbed a 
			bite to eat at the McDonald's next door for lunch while we were 
			here. 
			We made our way through Dallas and Fort Worth - well, along the 
			south side of these cities, anyway. Thankfully we didn't run into 
			any incidents as we made our drive. We ended up stopping at the 
			Eastland County Westbound Safety Rest Area along I-20 to stretch our 
			legs and take care of business. This was a pretty unusual rest area, 
			in that it was at a high elevation from the road, and that we were 
			the only people there despite the gigantic parking lot outside. 
			Well, us and a single worker. We stopped for gas less than 10 miles 
			after the rest area, this time at another Murphy USA, this time 
			outside Eastland, Texas. This stop came in around 4:15pm, and our 
			mileage between fill-ups this time was just under 190 miles, quite a 
			drop from the last leg! 
			Back on the road we went, driving past Abilene, Texas before 
			turning slightly north as we headed towards Clovis. We had smooth 
			sailing all the way, until we made our next stop in Lubbock, Texas 
			to top off at the Chisum Travel Center around 7:30pm. We bumped up 
			the length of our trip to 240 miles this time. 
			We cruised around Lubbock and all the way through the rest of our 
			drive, hitting the Texas/New Mexico border around 9:00pm 
			central/8:00pm mountain time. It was just a short drive into New 
			Mexico to get us to the ultimate destination of our trip - Tyler's 
			new house in Clovis. We pulled in to the driveway there around 
			8:30pm local time. We were met outside by one of Tyler's new 
			roommates, who gave us a quick tour of the house. We 
			ended up getting Tyler's car off of the trailer and unloaded most of his stuff before we headed 
			out to find a bite to eat for dinner. Unfortunately for us, everything in 
			town seemed to close at 10:00pm. Although we were trying to get 
			a table well before ten, the local Chili's stopped seating at 
			9:00pm. 
			We ended up going to the La Quinta Inn just a couple of miles 
			from Tyler's house and ordering 
			pizza from Dominos (we tried Pizza Hut, but they too were closing 
			early). After two long days in the car, we were just tired and 
			looking forward to getting a good nights sleep.  |