"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley."

Oh, we had planned the best morning in Ruidoso! We were going to have a wonderful breakfast (we did!) and then wander among the various silver, art, sculpture, etc., galleries. Then we would leave about noon and drive to Amarillo. Well, we did drive to Amarillo. 

We left Ruidoso fairly early (right after breakfast at the Cornerstone Bakery—mmm, mmm, good!). Randy made the mistake of listening to the weathermen. They LIE! The weathermen said a storm was coming and we decided to beat the storm. WHAT storm? It didn’t materialize. And we never got to wander around Ruidoso.

We spent the night in Amarillo and the weathermen said that a thunderstorm would pass over Amarillo in the very early morning leaving nothing but blue sky behind, but not until after about 9am. Now, Randy is the very best weatherman I know. He can look at a weather map and KNOW what is going to transpire in the next 12-24 hours. He made the mistake of a) not knowing where on the internet to find a radar map of the weather and b) well, there is no b).

He listened to the weathermen who said the storm system would be passing through Amarillo from NW to SE and would be gone by 9am. 

So. We got up about 8, putzed around packing and whatnot. Had breakfast (included in the hotel rate so we didn’t want to miss THAT!). Then left. About 9am. I drove. For two hours. IN THE RAIN. IN THE F@#$ING DRIVING RAIN. Rain so hard you didn’t want to pass a semi because of the blowback from the truck tires. I—I— drove. Weathermen LIE! OMG, I think that was the worst rain I’ve ever driven in! But, since I am writing this, we survived! And Randy, bless his heart, just read his book and the newspaper. The rain did not pass from NW to SE, it went right along the interstate that we were driving on. For hours. We couldn’t stop to change drivers without getting absolutely soaked so I just kept on driving.

Anyway. Here we finally made it to Joplin, MO. We’re on CDT (Central Daylight Time). We in AZ really don’t comprehend the rest of the country and its reliance on “Daylight Time.” When it’s over 100° at 9 at night, why on earth would we want to have MORE daytime? But back here, in the East (and, yes, they capitalize East), they, for some reason, want to have more daylight in the late evening. Ours not to reason why, ours just to do or die. Of heat stroke presumably. 

It’s been a long three days. 

Tomorrow (June 20^th) we have just a short drive to Branson. We’ll be there until the 26^th so we can finally unpack all the stuff we brought. And boy! did we bring stuff! It’s amazing what we think we’ll need: dressy clothes, knock-about clothes, just-in-case clothes, cowboy boots, tennis shoes, golf shoes, sandals, hiking boots, computers, cameras, camera cords, camera batteries, camera chargers, computer chargers, and on, and on, and on… We once travelled around the world with just one carry-on bag each. I have no idea how we did that!