20 September 2011

Had a leisurely breakfast with Doug and Dolores, but eventually tore myself away from their hospitality and headed west, almost immediately running into a "road closed" detour that had me zig-zagging southwest, ignoring all the suggestions that I take the turnpike, until I hooked up again with my planned route.

That eventually got me away from the Oklahoma City megalopolis, and out into the plains, with only one minor pause for a light-controlled one-lane bridge repair. The weather was pleasant; blue cloud-sprinkled skies and mid-seventies temps, with only the wind my passage created.

Stopped for fuel in Binger--I'm trying to put route waypoints in towns that are big enough to have facilities, which helps some with the planning. But sometimes you need a waypoint at an intersection where there's nothing but a road change, so that doesn't always work.

SR152 comes straight into Cordell and aims right for the courthouse, which looks like it straddles the road. But US183 turns south a block early; the courthouse sits in a square and 152 splits around it.

A while after I turn west again, I see huge planes lumbering in the skies ahead; I realize I'm approaching Altus AFB, from the east this time--I was on this road back in June, on my way to Sam's wedding. Hard to pick different routes if you visit the same places, unless you take really off-the-map roads.

Which I should have done later in the afternoon. I have a defined route in one gps, the other can't use routes, so it has all the waypoints, and I head for one (or two) at a time. That one kept wanting me to turn off onto 'farm roads' to get to the next point, and I kept ignoring it. So instead of taking a straight shot between SR207 and Plainview on FM2286, I dropped all the way down to Floydada and angled up US70. Since all roads in Texas are 70 mph (unless otherwise signed), it would have saved me ~15 minutes.

But I got to Plainview just after 1630, found a Days Inn across the (seriously road-constructing) street from a United Supermarket, and my day was done.   

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