It was the morning before Thanksgiving and we were headed to Amarillo, Texas. My parents, brother, sister and I were loading the SUV with our clothes, the cooler and other necessary things. We were all very excited that we were about to take a one-day road trip to Texas.
This was not our first time headed to Texas, so we already knew what to expect. From Riverside, California to Amarillo, Texas is about an 16-hour ride non-stop, but of course we have to stop every once in a while, which obviously took us longer to arrive. Both my parents were in the front row, my brother and sister were on the second row and I was in the last row with most of the blankets, which did not leave much space for me, but I did not mind because I was seating all to myself.
I kept to myself through out the trip, I listened to my MP3 and was texting my friends all day, and at night I would just stare out the window into the pitch-black sky. We made many gas station stops to fill up the tank and buy food, drinks and use the bathroom. Me, my mom and sister would take our sweet time to buy souvenirs, like postcards and key chains, we would do this in almost every stop we took.
My dad would sometimes get mad for wasting time on that, but we did not care, since that was like a once in a lifetime thing. Every time that we made a stop we would meet new people, I learned new things, but I was mostly impressed by their accents. I believe that we were driving through New Mexico when one of the wheels popped, I was in a deep sleep and the sudden swerving of the SUV woke me up in terror.
Fortunately nothing happened to us, but we had to get out in sunny New Mexico so my father could change the tire. While we waited on the side of the road I stared around me and imagined living there. I felt some sort of comfort being there because it is nothing compared to living in a largely populated place like Southern California.
It was the night before thanksgiving and we were still in New Mexico, when all of a sudden we see snow falling down the sky. It was my first time ever seeing snow fall, we opened the windows to let the snow in, but the freezing cold air was getting in the streets were getting a layer of snow and ice so we had to stop for the night and sleep under the 19 degree weather. The next morning we took off to a near fast food restaurant for some breakfast.
Once we arrived at a McDonalds we saw many people inside wearing many sweaters and drinking coffee, that is something you ever hardly see in Southern California, I enjoyed the view and being one of them. We drove across Arizona, New Mexico and to end with, into Texas. We arrived just in time for turkey and the festivities of Thanksgiving.
The day after on Friday we all went to the only shopping mall in that part of Texas, since it is the only mall for miles there, it was bursting with people. That night some our cousins took us to the theatre and after the scene we went to an old coffee shop. It was nothing compared to a modern coffee shop in California.
That coffee shop had a lot of history, it was obviously old and yet really comforting. Everywhere you’d turn there was something to look at, old cowboy and rodeo things. It suddenly hit me, if I learned more than I expected in one day within three states, what could I learn if I toured the entire United States?
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