Our Road Trip Across America, part 2. Everything's bigger in Texas!

After selling our house in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, we took our three rescued dogs on a road trip in a motorhome we bought for the adventure. Since a moving van with all our stuff had left Knoxville an hour ahead of us (and fortunately had a couple stops to make along the way), we had nine days to cross ten states to our new home on Puget Sound. This is part two of our journey. If you'd like a closer view of the photos, just click on them for full size.


After driving across Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, which I wrote about in last week's blog, we reached Texas. Where, seconds after crossing the border, things became a bit quirky.


We also discovered that the old claim is true -- everything really is bigger in the Lone Star state! Beginning with this Welcome Center rest stop, which had the tallest entrance we'd ever seen in all our driving trips around the county.


Even the Catholics supersize in Texas.


But, although we didn't stop, I suspect that religious superstore couldn't live up to what's billed as the largest cross in the world. Now, I have no way of knowing if that's precisely true, but if you check out the telephone poles to give you an idea of scale, you'll have to admit that this is one giant cross!


The state also has a LOT of wide open spaces.


We saw signs advertising this oversized steak for miles along the highway. I guess to whet the appetites of anyone who might have a craving for a 72 ounce steak. But hey, it's free! Now that is a big deal!


Did I mention there are a LOT of wide open spaces in Texas? Most of it, at least along our route, really, really flat.


This sign pretty much says it all. And those are definitely larger than your usual tires!



This photo of a Southwest jet coming in for a landing admittedly doesn't have anything to do with the theme, but I like it, so I decided to share it.



Finally, we've reached Amarillo! Home to the 72 ounce steak.


A word of advice to any hungry carnivores who might someday feel the urge to drive to Amarillo for steak -- it's always wise to read the fine print in any advertisement. In this case the cowboy steak is, indeed, free. If you can manage to choke it down in an hour. Since we really didn't want to be there on a night when someone might actually try, we decided to stick with pasta in the motorhome for dinner.


The Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo might not be the largest collection of Cadillacs in the world, but I'll bet it's the most unique. If you decide to visit, bring a spray can of paint because at this ranch, everyone's an artist!


While this photo might not bring up memories of James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant, but since I have a geophysicist sister who first moved to West Texas to drill wells in the oil patch, I'm leaving you with one last iconic look at Texas before we move on to New Mexico and Colorado next week.