Nine years is a long time: when George and I drove across the country after graduation in 1997, I certainly had never heard of wireless internet; now, it’s our fourth night on the road and we have yet to stay somewhere without it, from a Holiday Inn Express in Rushville, Indiana to the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, where I’m typing this out from a swinging bench looking out on Route 66. The owner just turned the neon on, and the iconic sign advertising “100% Refrigerated Air” is looking great.

Yesterday, we met up with my uncle Jack and my cousins Sarah and Amy and Amy’s husband Chris, and we all had a great time going out to dinner and looking at photos of the family and their archaeology trips. It had been years since we’d seen each other, and it was a great chance for them to meet Aimee, too. We took a little tour of Oral Roberts U. to see the Healing Hands and the Prayer Tower, and then hit the sack after a somewhat shorter driving day. This morning, which doesn’t feel like it was just this morning as it was three states ago, we took off from Tulsa and headed for breakfast in El Reno, at Robert’s, a tiny place with a dozen spots at the counter and nothing more. Great eggs and a pancake and “The Price is Right” on tv. From El Reno, we headed to Amarillo, past the giant cross in Groom, Texas; little did we know that in Effingham, Illinois, we’d seen the tallest just a few days before. We dined at The Golden Light Cafe – I had my first Fritos Pie, called a “Flagstaff Pie” there, which was delicious, and we watched the middle half hour of the Italy-Germany soccer match. From there, it was off to see the Huge Pair of Legs, and then back out on I-40 to see the much more popular Cadillac Ranch, before hitting the road again for Tucumcari.