LVSteve
Member
This is Part 4 of a series of posts I will make about our Christmas road trip to the northern edge of the DFW metroplex.
So the return leg was to be different in a couple of ways. First, no driving straight through, we would break our journey at Albuquerque. Second, our route out of North Texas would not be a simple reversal of the inbound track. As anybody living there will tell you, the whole Highway 380 corridor from Decatur to east of McKinney is a madhouse in daylight hours. I was reliably informed that many in Collin County are fed up with the development. Guess it's not enough people to change the local council enough to slow down the devastation. Denton County is suffering the same. As a result there is a mega amount of construction between McKinney and Denton on Highway 380, so Plan B was to travel up the 75 to Sherman to pick up Highway 82 heading west. This takes you to Henrietta to pick up the 287 heading to Amarillo and I-40, then onto Albuquerque.
This plan went well. There's some nice country West of Sherman, except it is plumb in the middle of the North Texas section of tornado alley.
Nope, not doing that. Highway 82 was largely very quiet. We took in the small town vibe at the DQ in Saint Jo during a bathroom break/coffee refill. Picking up the 287, we found that this highway was nearly as boring in daylight as it had been in the fog and rain at night. Still, the traffic was light and moving right along, so at least it was painless. Next stop was in Amarillo for diesel and on our way out of the city we stopped by the Cadillac Ranch near sunset. See pictures. I don't know if the Chelsea in the last picture is a girl or the Premier League football club from London. 
My wife took over driving duties from here to Clines Corner, with a bathroom break at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. BTW, the signage at Clines Corner is flat out awful. When you get there at night, there is no clue as to where you go at the top of the ramp, or a sign on the road you turn onto that indicates the entrance to the rest area. Hopeless.
I took over for the run into Albuquerque for reasons that will be explained elsewhere. We found our exit perfectly and arrived at a Holiday Inn Express with an Applebee's across the car park at about 2045. A good night's sleep followed.
***CLICK ON PICTURES FOR FULLSIZE***
So the return leg was to be different in a couple of ways. First, no driving straight through, we would break our journey at Albuquerque. Second, our route out of North Texas would not be a simple reversal of the inbound track. As anybody living there will tell you, the whole Highway 380 corridor from Decatur to east of McKinney is a madhouse in daylight hours. I was reliably informed that many in Collin County are fed up with the development. Guess it's not enough people to change the local council enough to slow down the devastation. Denton County is suffering the same. As a result there is a mega amount of construction between McKinney and Denton on Highway 380, so Plan B was to travel up the 75 to Sherman to pick up Highway 82 heading west. This takes you to Henrietta to pick up the 287 heading to Amarillo and I-40, then onto Albuquerque.
This plan went well. There's some nice country West of Sherman, except it is plumb in the middle of the North Texas section of tornado alley.
Nope, not doing that. Highway 82 was largely very quiet. We took in the small town vibe at the DQ in Saint Jo during a bathroom break/coffee refill. Picking up the 287, we found that this highway was nearly as boring in daylight as it had been in the fog and rain at night. Still, the traffic was light and moving right along, so at least it was painless. Next stop was in Amarillo for diesel and on our way out of the city we stopped by the Cadillac Ranch near sunset. See pictures. I don't know if the Chelsea in the last picture is a girl or the Premier League football club from London. My wife took over driving duties from here to Clines Corner, with a bathroom break at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. BTW, the signage at Clines Corner is flat out awful. When you get there at night, there is no clue as to where you go at the top of the ramp, or a sign on the road you turn onto that indicates the entrance to the rest area. Hopeless.
I took over for the run into Albuquerque for reasons that will be explained elsewhere. We found our exit perfectly and arrived at a Holiday Inn Express with an Applebee's across the car park at about 2045. A good night's sleep followed.***CLICK ON PICTURES FOR FULLSIZE***
Cruised out of Albuquerque and set sail West. A quick bathroom break at Gallup right by the freeway was followed by an uneventful ride into AZ. 
See pictures. My wife took over from here to Kingman where we stopped for diesel and lottery tickets. The ride up US-93 back to Vegas was uneventful, although it was noticeable that the northbound lanes were in better shape than the southbound. We had a following wind and I saw some stellar mileage numbers, certainly better than during some other runs.
