Blogger Octavia Pollock is bringing us along as she helps her friends Maxine and Paul move across the country with two horses in two. In a daily blog, she’s documenting their adventures. Day 1 was San Francisco To South Carolina With Two Horses, Two Cats, Two Trucks, Two Trailers And Three Humans while Day 2’s fun appeared in Fueled By Truck-Stop Coffee.

Despite their cramped and dusty stalls, Eigen and Echo looked none the worse this morning and felt even better after a few circuits of the parking lot. Indeed, Echo tried his hand at a few airs above the ground, just to shake out the creases, I’m sure.

We loaded Eigen first this time, as Echo hadn’t liked waiting for him the previous day. He was a bit reluctant, but a gentle reminder that we humans own such things as schooling whips encouraged him on. I then fetched Echo, who was so keen to join his new friend that he walked straight on before Maxine could even take the lead rope.

A quick dust-off before loading.

There was nobody around to see us off; this is definitely a basic place, although the lady who had checked us in had been perfectly friendly and generous with bug spray against the mosquitoes. My English accent gave her a little difficulty—Maxine had to translate my questions about the weather!

There’s a song entitled Show Me The Way To Amarillo, which implies that it’s a pretty town worth stopping for. Perhaps it is, if you get all the way in, but from the freeway it’s just more billboards and chain stores. But we did spot one attraction in the middle of a field: a series of 10 half-buried, brightly colored cars. Apparently, the Ant Farm installed the sculpture in 1974 as a tribute to the Cadillac tail fin, and visitors can add their own mark in spray paint. We were tempted to turn back, but managed to resist.

There wasn’t much else to see across the rest of Texas, bar Groom Cross, at 190’ the largest cross in the northern hemisphere, set up by Steve Thomas of Pampas in 1995 and ringed with petrified figures struggling to carry further crosses. There’s even a replica of Calvary and of Jesus’s tomb. As befits the Bible Belt, we also passed several signs exhorting people to embrace God, obey the Ten Commandments and read the Holy Bible: ‘Inspired. Absolute. Final.’ This half a mile way from an advert for a gun store, naturally.

The largest cross in the Northern Hemisphere.

Crossing into Oklahoma, the landscape became softer and more rolling, with an abundance of wildflowers. The odd amusing sign drew our gaze: ‘Fried pies’, ‘World’s best pizza’ (in whose judgment?!), ‘Report sex trafficking’, ‘Brinkley: home of the ivory-billed woodpecker’, ‘Shamrock: As Seen In The Movies’. 

There wasn’t much else to see, except for a large number of deceased armadillos on the side of the road. There were so many, in fact, that we started to keep a tally, something that felt rather ghoulish after we’d topped 20. By the end of the day, the total stood at 32; evidently, armadillos don’t have any traffic sense.

I’ve learnt a few useful things about American road signs that are a great help on long road trips: each state has mile markers that start at 0 in the east, and each junction is numbered according to the mile marker. Very sensible.

Pretty, but not much to see in farming country!

New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma each have different ways of saying that bridges may be icy: New Mexico just says “Icy Bridge” (which isn’t true in summer), Texas says “Bridge may be icy in cold weather” and Oklahoma says “Bridge ices before road” (both accurate and less lazy than the first). Disappointingly, Arkansas just says the same as Oklahoma.

A more exciting sign was “If water on road, turn around. Don’t drown. Flooding possible.” Friendly advice, but not the sort of thing we wanted to hear! There have been tremendous storms in southern Texas and across Oklahoma to Louisiana, with homes flooded and people drowned. A firefighter was killed trying to rescue someone from the water.

Thankfully from our point of view, the bad weather was far south of the I-40, at least when we were driving along it—the road had apparently been closed near Amarillo only hours before we reached it last night. We soon started to see evidence of the rain in the form of flooded fields and swollen rivers. Coming from California, we had almost forgotten what water looks like, but there was plenty to remind us here.

Awful flooding.

Things got even more exciting when we crossed into Arkansas to see growing super-cell storm clouds mounting ahead, piling up crisp and loaded and menacing, grey below and virginal white above. The skies south and north were black against the green fields and the winds were mounting. Nothing looked too close to us, so we stopped for a brief late lunch before cracking on.

Suddenly, our country-music station was interrupted by the harsh blare of an alarm, heralding a National Weather Service announcement. Tornado warnings were breaking out across Arkansas, southwest, north and southeast of our position. “Touch down reported crossing I-40 between miles 79 and 83,” the calm voice said.

We had just had lunch at mile 81. Glances exchanged—goodness, we were lucky. “I don’t want to see a tornado,” I remarked.

“Me neither. Armadillo,” Maxine replied.

Slightly on edge, we continued at a prudently high speed towards Little Rock, scanning the horizon for telltale storm cells. The skies were black, but by the time Echo’s owner called to see how we were getting on, we were starting to relax. Until Paul shot past in the U-Haul pointing forwards…

We ended the conversation and dialed him, to hear the disconcerting news that a tornado had been reported northwest of us, moving southeast at 70mph. We spurred forwards, surprised that so many people were still driving towards the storm on the far side of the carriageway, and held our breath until the sky started to clear. Looking back at the blackness, I glimpsed a funnel-shaped cloud, only stretching a short way towards the earth but horribly like the precursor to a full-blown tornado. A tad too close for comfort, especially with two horses in tow.

Tornadoes brewing on the horizon.

Having had a slightly late start, we decided we wouldn’t make it to our favored stables, Journeys End in Jackson, Tenn., so we called the back-up option, Shady Creek Stables in Arlington, an hour or so closer and just outside Memphis.  They sounded on the ball in any case, and it looked like an interesting place, a Paso Fino breeding and training barn.

Hotel booked, after an interminable discussion of the options with Joey of Hotels.com, to whom everything was “not a problem” but for whom everything seemed to be a struggle. After a search ourselves, and a decision to smuggle the cats in, we found somewhere and pressed on over the Tennessee River and into Memphis, home of Elvis. For the first time, I missed the state sign, it being too dark for my camera to react quickly enough, but we were delighted to reach our fourth state of the day.

The barn proved to be quite a long way into the countryside, which would have been a beautiful drive had it not been 11 p.m. and if Paul hadn’t got separated from us at a traffic light. It’s at times like this that you see the value of satnav, and with a failing phone and no guide, Paul did extremely well to find us just as we were watering the horses!

Both horses looked in fine fettle, and thrilled to be in large, airy stables on one side of a large barn with an indoor school in the center. A groom showed us in and filled up the water buckets, and equine smiles were ubiquitous. When we arrived, the groom and a friend were reclining in the warm evening air, beer in hand, and when we left, they were joined by several more.

Evidently, this was the place to be, but we were content to check into our motel, ignore the dire reports of tornado warnings being almost gleefully bandied around in the lobby, and sleep. Maxine and Paul are doing brilliantly with all the driving, but, as Maxine said, the narrow-country-road section of the last 20 minutes were a killer, requiring even more concentration, especially with the length of the gooseneck trailer behind that makes going round corners a tricky business.

But we made it: on to Virginia tomorrow!