Sunday, October 18 2009
On Friday I loaded up the four horses and headed to the Lexington airport to pick up Jeremy so that we could start our drive home. (On the way, there a young boy who was in the back seat of a car and motioning with his hand to honk the horn, you know that pulling motion gesture. I was so excited that I could actually do what he was asking! I know a bit pathetic, but it made me smile. ) This is a very small airport so it wasn't too bad to get in there with our rig.
Jeremy got in and we were off. Our drive began at 6pm and we drove through the night. On our drive we called Charisse and Karl from time to time to see how we were all doing. Sometime in the middle of the night I got a text message from Charisse that was crazy. I called her and she told me that they had been following a big rig when all of the sudden it swerved violently and then crashed off the road through trees flipping over and twisting to to a halt. Karl and Charisse pulled over and ran to the rig. It was so buried in trees that Karl had to move branches away to be able to climb up on the truck to scale the side of it to get to the passenger side window. He looked in and the driver looked dead. Then the driver came to and Karl and Charisse waited for emergency crew to arrive. When they arrived the guy was able to climb out and walk away. He seemed like maybe he broke some ribs and his left arm was cut up but overall not much damage! The front tire had blown out and sent the rig out of control. It was the guys first truck driving accident in 25 years. We looked for a place to stop in Arkansas. We found the fairgrounds but it was more like a carnival land that was all locked up and there was no sign of a place to keep horses. The neighborhood that we were driving through was pretty scary as well so maybe it was for the best. It wasted about an hour of time and it was already 2 am. We drove further and with no luck on a stopping point at 4:45 am we pulled over at a rest stop and took a four hour nap. The horses were getting restless so we woke up and started going again. Last night was Saturday night and we found a place to stop in Amarillo Texas. We stayed at "The Big Texan". Home of the free 72 oz steak (if you can eat it in an hour, otherwise it is $72). There is a horse hotel there as well as a steak house. We unloaded and took care of the four horses and then waited for our friends Ceci and Jason to arrive so we could all go to dinner. While we waited we saw the cow statue pictured above. We also looked through the gift shop where they have cowboy everything as well as a Rattlesnake in a cage. Jason, Ceci, Jeremy and I had dinner and the steak was awesome. f you are ever on Hwy 40 take exit 75 and have a good meal. They also let you use there turnout pens for free for two hours if you are eating in the restaurant. Good to know. We slept like the dead and started out again this morning around 9. The horses are all well. We are currently in New Mexico and the slow and steady truck is doing exactly that, getting us there slowly. | |||||||
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