Knight's Log 20230116

Day one of travel complete! Yesterday my dad, brother, and I loaded up in my car which we had packed full of my books, games, and clothes. We drove all the way from our home in Iowa to Amarillo, Texas. Which if you pull it up on a map it says something like 12 hours, which is a lot; but if you factor in gas, bathroom, and our late afternoon stop to say hi to a friend of my Dad that lives in Kansas...we were on the road for 16 hours.  

Most of the drive was fairly boring, there was little to no snow on the ground anywhere and so the grass was brown and the trees were bare. However as we were driving west across Texas at about 10 p.m. we pulled off to the side of the road turned off the lights and just looked up at the stars. I could see more stars then, than I ever have in my life. Now, I grew up in Minneapolis so chances to get a good look at the stars there didn't show much because of the amount of light polution. So, when we moved to small town Iowa when I was like 14 I was astounded by the veiw of the night sky that was visible even just from my porch. So looking up at the sky last night and seeing all those stars, the bible story where God told Abraham that he would have as many children as there were stars in the sky seems a whole lot more innumerable than it did before. &nsbp;

In the morning Dad let us pick where we had breakfast, and like the introverted teenagers we are my brother and I picked the grocery store. So, we have just been eating what we got then whenever we are hungry, which is convenient because then we dont have to stop for food. Plus after we had checked out Dad told us that all of our grocerys had cost about as much as all three of us having breakfast at the hotel would have been. So since its about 5 p.m. here and other than some bakery items at a differnt grocerry store thats all we've eaten isn't bad for a road trip.  

For our trip today we are going from the hotel we stayed at in Amarillo to the Excalibur in Las Vegas. With our first day of travel being so long it lets each of the successive days be shorter. Today is 10 hours of driving and tomorrow will be 9. My favorite part so far has been getting to see the Sierra mountain range. We were fairly far away as you can see from the picture but the view then and as we traversed other slopes in the hours following was spectacular. Other than that the land has mostly been fairly dry and flat, with the only distinguishable land features being the platues in varying shades of brown, yellow, and red.  

I'm not too sure how to feel about staying in Las Vegas although know my Dad will be with me helps and the fact that we're staying at the Excalibur makes it totally cool. It also sounds like we're going to go on a roller coaster at somepoint tonight. However, what I am really excited about is seeing the Hoover Dam. Dad mentioned that we were going to be going past it and I thought it sounded familiar. So, I consulted a fellow Percy Jackson fan to confirm my hunch and it is the dam that they go to in The Titan's Curse which is the 3rd book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (can you tell I like books?). I'm really just hoping that its not too dark by the time we get there so that I can get a picture with it to send to my fellow Camp-Halfblood enthusiasts. Unfortunately my chances are fairly slim given that we are still 3-4 hours away.&nsbp;