2023 Road Trip

Using A Mini For A Hat Rack

We started our day in Paris and ended it in French Louisiana.

down There was a Dunkin right across the street from our hotel in Paris, but it wasn’t easy getting there. Exiting the Holiday Inn Express I had to dash across two lanes of traffic traveling at 55MPH and then wait on a light to make a left turn. A left turn into a shopping center parking lot followed. Then I looped around a building to get to the entrance of the store. A convenience store. Inside to the right was the Dunkin area with a line of four people in front of me and just one person behind the counter. I turned around and walked right back outside. Sigh.

up I wasn’t sad for long as I got to make a stop at a favorite roadside oddity on the way out of town – an Eifel Tower replica with a giant red cowboy hat on top. We already had a photo here from 2014 with our previous Miata in it from a Moss Motoring Challenge and of the previous Mini when we went west to attend a wedding in 2018 so it was time to add this Mini to the gallery.

way up Things peaked though for lunch when we changed our route some and ended up in Logansport, Louisiana for lunch. Donna found a place called the Crawfish Shack. This little unassuming place a block off US84 was awesome. Donna got the grilled shrimp and grits and I got four small crawfish hand pies with fries and everything was hot in temperature and taste. Mmm mmm good. The whole meal including tip was under $30.

back down Tonight we headed into downtown Natchitoches to eat a restaurant that we ate at back in 2014 and remembered quite fondly. This time though it was just a shadow of that memory. We just ordered appetizers, 2 Crab Cakes and a Seafood Dip w/ Homemade Chips. The crab cakes were deep fried and the crab meat was indiscernible from the rest of filling and the seafood dip was good, but the chips weren’t heated and slightly over fried. For the privilege of eating this “meal” set us back nearly $50 with the tip.

Burgerland

We had a long day, slightly over 300 miles, but pretty fun. A practically 2 for one Roadside America stop, a total flummoxing of 2 other sites and found the 3 geocaches we looked for. Trouble was we got to Paris during there rush hour and our hotel required a funky U-turn to get to. With that traffic and our tired minds it was kind of frustrating.

But all was solved with a burger and the best fries in the world for dinner. That’s my burger on the right, Donna’s is off camera to the left, and the fries, a small order, were to share.

33,000 Giant Arrows

Today was one of our shorter driving days, only 219 miles, but we had 8 objectives to find on our Roadside America list. We found and photographed five: Flying Fortress of the Plains in Hobbs, NM, Missile Water Towers in Seminole TX, Yard Art & 1935 Triangle-Shaped Gas Station in Snyder, TX and finally the National WASP Museum and Site in Sweetwater, TX. We saw one other, the Uniroyal Gal – Tornadoes Cheerleader in Lamesa, TX, but there were a bunch of folks out front of the tire store so we just drove by.

We didn’t see the Quanah Parker Arrow that was in downtown Seminole because the traffic was pretty busy. When we got to the second one in Snyder, I saw the arrow and its location, I just knew we had seen it before and taken a picture of it already on a previous trip this way. Even though we didn’t get those two, between those two cities, we stumbled on one in the really small town of Gail, which is where the picture above was taken.

There are not 33,000 Quanah Parker Arrows piercing the Texas Plains, just eighty-eight and each denotes a particular site of Comanche and Quanah Parker’s history. Here is an article telling about how they came to be. About halfway along today’s route the Mini crossed over the 33,000 mile mark.

Another Billy the Kid Reference

Almost 5 years ago to the date we visited Billy the Kid’s grave in Fort Sumner, NM and a week or so earlier on our way west we had stopped in the town of Hico, TX where the folks think he died there in 1950.

We did stop at the site of the Lincoln County War. Here is where Henry McCarty, AKA Billy the Kid, staged his jail break by killing two US Marshalls. Billy was awaiting execution for murder during the “war” between cattle baron factions. Every first weekend in August they reenact Billy’s murderous escape in a small replica of the town seen above.

We ate lunch in Roswell and it was a great lunch too, we both can highly recommend Geli’s Cafe. That was all we did there, I mean how many times can you visit the International UFO Museum & Research Center? But if you are into the whole UFO thing, New Mexico has gone all in on it. On the state DOT map there are 5 UFO crash sites listed, 1947 Roswell, B010, Communion Hill, Alternate and San Antonio (NM).

Big Day

In almost everything but miles.

We got a big New Mexico sky, that threatened rain and only delivered a few stray drops.

Then we were forced to park on the shoulder while a big something or other took up the whole road. Unlike Friday’s big something or other this one was coming in the opposite direction so it only caused a few minutes of lost time and no lost miles.

Lastly we visited a very big radio telescope.

Somewhere Under The Rainbow

Coming back from the hotel across the parking lot with our laundry we were greeted with the sight above. Why were we coming back from from a different hotel than what we are staying at you ask, the Holiday Inn Express’s washers worked, but the dryers were broke. The two hotels had an agreement, we could use the TownPlace Suites dryers and their guests could use the HIE pool because theirs was broke. What happens when one of these properties fixes their problem I don’t know.

Because today’s destination was Gallup, NM instead of Santa Fe we came south on a new to us road, US491 instead of the usual US550. Boy was it spotty in quality and I spent most of the drive in the somewhat smoother left lane. We somehow think US550 is better than coming south this way, but if it is, it is probably only marginally, as most Navaho Nation roads we’ve traveled leave a lot in the smoothness department.

Today’s planned lunch spot in Cortez, CO was called The Farm Bistro was highly rated on TripAdvisor and its menu looked awesome, but unfortunately yours truly forgot to check their hours. It is closed on Saturday & Sunday. So we we going to try another place across the street, but it was closed too. We ended up at something that TripAdvisor probably doesn’t even rate, Burger King. At least the food was quick and hot. We did snag a couple of Roadside America oddities, a giant cow outside an out of business BBQ joint and some vultures picking on a car at a local junkyard. Photo #3 is because after seeing all those Corvettes a couple days what should we find outside tonight’s hotel but a car carrier with an octet of under wraps C8 Corvettes.

Detouring Around 31,000 Pounds

After breakfast at the hotel we headed to downtown Ely, Nevada to check out all the murals there. Donna had picked up a brochure about them the last time we were here. Several of them were very nice, but after seeing a half dozen or so we ran out of patience for trying to match the brochure to the murals. For such a small town there was a high density of Chevy Corvettes lurking around on the streets. There were also an awful lot of current American muscle cars as well. Somehow we had managed to arrive in Ely (pronounced eel • eee) for the opening of the Nevada Open Road Challenge weekend.

While bopping along east on US6/50, our planned route for the day, about 50 miles into it we came to a line of slow moving cars ahead of us. A 1/4 mile ahead we could see flashing lights of a highway patrol car that was behind a great big ol’ thing that was taking up the whole two lane road. There were additional highway patrol cars ahead getting oncoming cars to get off the pavement. The convoy was traveling about 30MPH on a road marked for 70, but in a way we definitely got lucky on when we caught up to this mess.

Because just a couple miles of creeping along, like magic, an alternate route presented itself, Nevada 487 which turned towards the Great Basin National Park and we took it. A quick check of Google Maps showed that if we continued along that road it would take us on a southern loop to I-15 that would get us back on track and only costing us 30 miles and 30 minutes. This was a route that Donna had mentioned possibly taking anyway, so it did work out real well. It even led us to an awesome taco place in Milford, UT called Brody’s. Donna had 2 pollo & I had 2 al pastor which was just the right size in quantity and price.

Somewhere along today’s route while dodging approximately thirty one thousands pounds of big ol’ piece of machinery the Mini’s odometer clicked past the 31,000 mile mark.

Along the way we managed to snag a couple more Roadside America oddities, an ranch entry arch made entirely of antelope antlers and some fuel tanks painted as soft drink cans.