August 12th

This is it! The beginning of the end of our trip! We are sad about leaving but looking forward to being settled again after 5 weeks on the road.

We said goodbye to Mama and Jay when they went to work and then met Eric and Kristina Kennedy at the Froniter for breakfast. They recently got married and brought the photo album to show us. It looks like we missed a beautiful wedding this June. We're glad that we at least got this chance to catch up though. Sounds like all is going well for them and that the world may be able to expect some little Kennedys sometime in the near future...

It took about an hour to pack our car, and another half hour to put the luggage rack on top (Greg Hansen gave it to us-- thanks Greg!). Remarkably, we were on the road by 12:15 pm! It was sad leaving Albuquerque. We have so many good friends here and New Mexico is really beautiful. We turned on 104.1 KLSK and as we drove out of Tijeras Canyon, we heard "Don't Look Back" by Boston. What is it with that Classic Rock Karma of ours?

The landscape gets flatter and flatter towards Moriarty and by the time we hit Tucumcari we could see for thousands of miles. We listened to Chris Isaak's 'Heart Shaped World' which was appropriately wistful and desertlike. Then things got silly when we popped in a tape called Sappy Counry and Sappy Celebritoons that Bill Simoneau made for me a few years ago.. . William Shatner singing "Mr. Tambourine Man," Lenord Nimoy singing "Proud Mary," and other scary stuff.

We were in a hurry to get to Aunt Sybil and Uncle Clyde's for dinner but still had to stop at Caddilac Ranch on the west side of Amarillo.We LOVE Cadillac Ranch, and have been visiting here since 1990 or so, ever since we started travelling so much. Once, on our way out to Rhode Island, the cadillacs were painted pink and 8 months later on the way back they were painted blue! Now they are yellow and covered in spraypaint. Check out this cadillac factoid: apparently the Ant Farm people who first made the sculpture in the 1970s decided that the town of Amarillo was getting too close and ruining the "cadillacs in a remote field" look. SO, they dug 'em up and moved the whole durn thing 5 miles farther away. Yes, that is 10 full-size cadillacs. Even crazy is bigger in Texas!

Aunt Sybil had drinks waiting on the patio when we arrived in Amarillo. We informed her that while we have seen several people on this trip multiple times, she is the winner with 3 Biovarg sightings (Amarillo, San Diego and Amarillo again). It was great to see Uncle Clyde too (for the first time on the trip). At Lynne's request, Aunt Sybil made her world-famous biscuits to which she just had to add some fried chicken. Delicious! We had a great time visiting with them.

	Saying goodbye before Mama goes to work
	Mama, Robby, and Jay
	Eric and Kristina at the Frontier
	Here we are at the Frontier again!
	The shuttlecraft --- all packed and ready to go
	Lots of sky out here
	Cadillac Ranch
	Cadillac Ranch and photographer phreak who was hanging out there
	More caddies.
	Caddies + Sky
	Aunt Sybil and Uncle Clyde (known in some circles as 'Mr. and Mrs. Amarillo')