Thankfully, the accident was not us. Let’s just say that there was a 27 mile swath of black ice on I-40 in Texas. We knew it was coming up because “they” (the evil DOT) was advertising it on the little message boards in Oklahoma. It was odd; we checked the weather forecasts before we left our cozy midwestern state and it didn’t say that Texas was getting hit with weather. In fact, we were all the way to Shamrock, TX, before the road really got bad. And then — POOF! — the ice was gone. Is is possible that the road crew in one county (or township or whatever the fuck local entity they use) were all out drinking beer and just forgot to salt the roads? Needless to say, the SUV in front of us (which was hauling a camper/trailer) spun off the road and into the ditch. If they had managed to get back onto the road, we probably would have hit them. As it was, we couldn’t stop our car to see if they were okay because we would have went right into the ditch with them. {Sigh} Of course, this added a good hour to our trip and we ended up stopping about 107 miles short of our goal of Santa Fe.
Other random factods: (1) So far, every single rest area we have passed in New Mexico has been closed. (2) We have yet to find an OPEN welcome center. (3) The closest we came was the information stand located at the nation’s largest McDonalds (I shit you not – it was actually listed on the map!) on the Oklahoma Turnpike. (4) Is Carl’s Jr. just a glorified Hardees? We stopped there tonight and it was adequate, but after eating that burger I seriously felt like a snake that swallowed an ostrich egg. Bluck! (5) Speaking of the Carl’s Jr. Experience … everyone in the damned restaurant stared at us when we walked in the door. Maybe it was my ACLU shirt in the middle of Red State Land? Who knows?
Carl’s Jr. is a western creation. They merged with Hardee’s about 10 years ago through some sort of purchase, but I can’t remember which one purchased the other. When that happened, Hardee’s adopted the Carl’s Jr. star logo that CJ’s had been using for several years.
I initially thought that CJ’s would be rebranded as Hardee’s, but they remain distinct entities, with the same logo but different menus. Carl’s Jr. was the source of the semi-famous Paris Hilton burger porn commercial.
That makes sense. Thanks for the history of that. I knew I remembered Carl’s Jr. for some reason – it must be the scary Paris Hilton thing.
We also ran into Whataburger (didn’t try these) and Blake’s Alotaburger (which was okay because they had green chile, but not as good as the hamburger I had on the Indian Reservation west of Albuquerque).
[...] we got off to such a rocky start, we didn’t quite make our goal of Santa Fe on the first night. In a way, this turned out to [...]