Women Drivers

Another long drive was scheduled for today, this time travelling north through Texas up to Lubbock and mostly off the interstate.  We were expecting the roads and countryside to be pretty devoid of people, so the drive was going to be stress free.

We said goodbye to San Antonio mid morning, however leaving the city was a little more difficult than expected because there was a marathon which went around the entire centre city.  After unsuccessfully asking a couple of police officers for directions we managed to find an open street to the motorway and we were off.

As expected soon after leaving the city limits the traffic thinned out pretty quickly and the fabled 80MPH  speed limit kicked in, which meant people travelled at 90.  80 is the highest speed limit on a non-toll road in the USA (you can pay to go on "super-highways" where the speed limit is 85 MPH), but you don't really notice it.  What you do notice is the gas tank gauge going down a lot quicker so pretty soon we had to pull into a gas station.

We also needed breakfast/lunch as well as some other supplies, luckily there was a nearby supermarket.  It was a great supermarket, one that gave away loads of free samples and also had a little food court so it satisfied both of our needs.  After a tasty breakfast of steak and macaroni cheese we were off again.

After a little while we left the interstate, and the roads got pretty quiet.  Up until this point in the trip the girls hadn't actually driven but they had promised us that they would drive in Texas. True to her word Amy, very apprehensively, took the wheel for a short stint followed by Vickie who was most excited by the fact she could pick the music (the rule is driver chooses).

So the girls can now say that they drove in the US, however not on the interstate so when we came to another one of those I took over from Vickie.

The scenery for the remainder of the drive consisted of 1000's of wind turbines, just as many oil pumpjacks (so I think there must sill be a lot of oil under Texas) and loads of Ranches.

We got into Lubbock just before dark, Lubbock isn't the most exciting town, although they do have a pretty good music pedigree.  Both Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison were born here, however I don't think they stuck around for very long.  After check-in we were on the hunt again for some more steak (warm up for tomorrow's 72 ounce steak challenge in Amarillo) what we found was a place called Bryan's steakhouse. We were promised by the Internet it was cheap and it was not wrong. I got a 12 ounce steak which included all you can eat salad, massive baked potato and an ice cream for $12 and it wasn't bad tasting at all, meat was very tender.

With our belly's full we headed back to the hotel for bed, ready for our trip to Amarillo tomorrow.