Amarillo to McKinney Tx

 McKinney, TX

This road trip is fueled by doughnuts

Cutting through the north of Texas to our Airbnb

This morning we woke up when we woke up and got a bit of free breakfast at our Hampton Inn.  The breakfasts at Hampton Inns usually aren't that great but this one was noticeably worse than the others.  Usually there is a hot vat of cooked oatmeal but the Amarillo Hampton Inn has a hot vat of something that they think is biscuit gravy.  I took a little for science and was expecting it to be terrible and wasn't disappointed.  

After our morning snack and after the coffee water started kicking in, we packed up the room, packed up the van and said see ya later to Amarillo TX.  I mentioned that the next time we are in the area (because counties) we should check out downtown Amarillo.  We didn't really see Amarillo and the parts we did see consisted of mostly I-40 and their weird frontage road system that I really don't like.  

We used the "Texas U-Turn" portion and once you get to the other side of the U-Turn you never have the right of way and cars are making left turns into your lane from behind you.  You can read about it here if you want to nerd it up.  Also they already built the first one in California.

On the way out of town we stopped by Doughnut Stop for road snacks.  It seems Doughnut Stop has a stranglehold on Amarillo.  There aren't really any mom and pop doughnut shops that we could find so we went to Big Doughnut and they were just okay.

The drive was fine.  It was at least 4 lanes the whole way so no waiting behind trucks for very long.  We took a direct route and didn't do any county collecting diversions.  The counties here are relatively small and so close that there is always a new county for us within a short drive.  Texas is 268,597 square miles and those square miles are broken up into 254 counties.  We call it "A Dot Matrix of Counties".

I chose this map to show because of the pretty colors.  They don't mean anything.

Whenever we go to a new place I am only aware of the commonly quoted stereotypes of that place.  When you arrive in that place those stereotypes are usually drowned out by reality.  We stopped at a rest stop on US 287 and it was one of the nicest rest stops I have ever seen as far as amenities.  I mentioned to Donna that if we were in a contest to say something nice about Texas I would have a few new things to say and that is one of the great things about travel.  Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  

Doughnut Stop

They got a write up too!

Watch for snakes!

This rest stop had a Train Station vibe going on

I see The Lone Star

Inside the air-conditioning was pumping and there were kiosks

Each rest stop had info about the surrounding cities

The 2nd rest stop was as good as the first

Another Tornado shelter.  Our first was at Coors Field in Denver

One of the kiosks was supposed to be able to print directions kind of like Mapquest, remember them?

The picnic shelters were so appealing that we ate our lunch there

Leftover BBQ

We also got close to a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.  This was a new life bird for us.

We rolled into McKinney TX at around 4pm.  We unloaded the van in 95 degree heat and then sat in the air-conditioning the rest of the evening.  Our Airbnb is large.  We have some arranging to do but I am sure it will be a comfortable place to spend a month when we are done arranging it to suit our needs.

Working our way across the US

An enlarged key.  2022 will end up being our biggest county collecting year by December.

We are 7.5% done with Texas!

If you didn't read about our trip from Denver to Oklahoma you can read about it here.