On Tuesday, June 23, we breezed across the Texas panhandle, right through Amarillo without stopping at about noontime and hit the New Mexico stateline at 3 and gained an hour with the change to Mountain Daylight Savings Time! I told Linda we would be able to get a genuine Mexican dinner in Tucomcari just up the road. She was pretty excited to know that!

This is typical of the landscape as we crossed the flatlands of western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle; mile after mile of cultivated farmland, with small farming towns and huge grain elevators.

We stopped in Shawnee, Oklahoma, east of Oklahoma City after a long day on the road from Memphis, Tennessee. The next morning we continued west on the I-40, but had to stop in the little town of Elk City, OK when Linda spotted a sign advertizing a motor lodge called the Bedford Inn. Anything with the name "Bedford" will always have meaning for us after our missionary service in Bedford, Virginia. As you can easily tell from the picture this is not Virginia! We are now in the wide open spaces of the Great Plains of America!

Except for rest stops there is no taking of pictures except from your moving car when you are traveling on the Interstate. This is a rest stop near Sallisaw Oklahoma on the I-40, overlooking the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.