Day 2.25: Oklahoma City, OK to Santa Fe, NM

Abe convinced Arielle to wake up at 7:30am so that we could have breakfast with Helene before hitting the road at 9am. Helene had already prepared a lavish feast for us. Since she was born in Brooklyn before spending her high school years in San Antonio, we knew that she knew good bagels, so we asked if the bagels she had bought compared. She described them as very poor – “a roll with a hole” – but we found them to be considerably better than expected. We departed, promising to return to this lovely home as a dusting of snow bid us goodbye, and set out on the long drive to our last westernmost destination.

Passing a road sign for Garth Brooks Blvd, Arielle was shocked that Abe asked to clarify that he was a musician? We also saw an advertisement for The Big Texan Free 72-oz Steak and had to Google it – you can read all about it yourself. We will not be doing it. Abe continued working on this very blog while Arielle listened to Big Little Lies while she was driving, and we accidentally missed the sign when we entered Texas but Abe managed to get a shot of another sign just past that.

Arielle wasn’t hungry yet so Abe found an exit that had a Domino’s Pizza which he randomly got a craving for and a Subway since Arielle is not a fan of Domino’s. It turns out that, while Abe was ordering, she was both got hungry and decided to try Domino’s, which she found “perfectly adequate,” in her own words. Though there wasn’t any birthday deal for Arielle (more on that below), we did get an amazing deal, paying $7.99 for a three-topping large pizza instead of the $10.99 for a medium. This is one chain we can now appreciate and may visit again on our travels. We made a quick stop outside Amarillo at the famous Cadillac Ranch, though the smell of the spraypaint was more than enough to inspire us to quickly leave.

We crossed into New Mexico and stopped at the visitor center, before continuing on to the much-advertised Clines Corners, a rest stop that pales in comparison to the likes of Wall Drug and even most rest stops. We made great time getting to Santa Fe, passing some unmelted snow along the way, arriving at the Hyatt Place around 5:45pm. It was a very nice hotel but we were disappointed to see that the hot tub wasn’t working. When we walked into the hotel room, Arielle was delighted to see a surprise from her a parents – a vase with purple and orange flowers, a card, and an adorable emoji balloon sitting on the desk.

We got some work done in the hotel and then left to drive about ten minutes to Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café, a small casual vegetarian restaurant that Arielle immediately commented smelled very healthy. We got the World Chips appetizer, which was an assortment of fried taro, cassava and plantain chips with pico de gallo and black beans, which were quite spicy, but Abe very much enjoyed it. Arielle got the ABLT and was shocked to discover that the bacon was made out of seaweed. Abe got the cauliflower tacos, sauce on the side of course. The best possible gift that Abe could have given Arielle for her birthday was to share her food since normally he’s repulsed by the condiments or dressings it includes. This time, her ABLT, which Abe did say had too much “L” with quite the large protruding lettuce leaf, and the lack of dressing, since she didn’t like the cilantro-lime sauce, made it more appealing to Abe, and so he ate most of it, while Arielle took his cauliflower tacos but decided after two bites that she was done. We were both impressed with the veggie bacon, which Arielle described as tasting like a veggie hot dog. Arielle wasn’t entirely satisfied by her meal but knew that dessert was coming so she wanted to save space.

Since Arielle is a leap day baby and only gets a real birthday every four years, her tradition has been to have Baskin Robbins Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream at 11:59pm on February 28th. There were three Baskin Robbins within a few miles, and so went to one and used her free birthday scoop to get Abe some World Class Chocolate, while Arielle bought a double scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip that they could share later. Arielle was even more excited this year because it was her Baskin Robbins birthday (31) and she felt like she had waited her entire life to celebrate it.

We were ecstatic to discover that there was a freezer in our fridge so we could wait to have the ice cream until the prescribed time. We spent a few minutes at the pool – Abe went in, Arielle didn’t – and Arielle got a few phone calls from friends and family. We watched an episode of TV that ended just in time for us to celebrate Arielle’s non-birthday with the ice cream, and then went right to bed.

Approximate number of miles covered: 542