Day 29 - 13th November

We awoke to a text from our house sitter, Rowan, to the effect that there had been a significant earthquake in NZ, but the house and occupants were OK. That began a day of great unease for us as we watched events unfold from afar, feeling quite helpless and sad for our home country as it went through this terrible events. We kept ourselves glued to Stuff and Facebook during the day as we drove from our overnight mid-point stop in Texarkana, on the Texas/Arkansas border, to our penultimate destination, Dallas.

We made good driving, again managing to dodge the multitude of trucks on the road, and got to our chosen Hotel by about midday. Unfortunately our hotel room wasn’t ready, and so with car full of luggage, we picked a local mall to go and spent a few hours at until 3pm.

We picked the North Park mall further along on the I-30 into Dallas, as this also had a boot shop that deb was keen to see. Going along the freeway, there was a curious optical effect where the city’s high-rise buildings seemed to be quite distant, then suddenly appeared much closer.

As has probably been mentioned in a previous post, driving a city freeway system can be very fraught. Often there are exit only lanes that can trap you, and after going past an exit there may be a need to have to quickly cross two to three lanes of traffic to be positioned for the next correct exit or off-ramp. Add to this other cars whizzing past at all speeds and cars frequently changing lanes suddenly and without warning, and changing lanes is a bit of a mission as well, because cars tend to hang in the blind spot. Dallas was no exception, and after we’d negotiated our way through the network and to the mall we were both happy to just stop and take a breather.

The mall, North Park, is pretty much like any big mall. Two floors with major department stores at each corner with many smaller shops and boutiques jammed in between. Deb had earmarked a shop for some boots to look at, and we found it without too much issue (and by looking at a store map) but although they were nice, they weren’t the “wow” factor she was looking for.

We had a bite to eat at the food court and watched with admiration as a young Latina woman corralled and fed a raucous and fidgety group of young kids whose vocal volume seemed to be permanently set to loud.

After that we split up so Deb could look at clothes and I could see if the place had a book or toy store, but the closest was a Disney store where I picked up a small die cast model of an X-Wing for $10.

I happened to be wearing a t-shirt with a silver fern on it, and two gentlemen walked up and asked me if it was a silver fern, to which I replied in the affirmative. They said they’d been in NZ a few months ago and had heard about the quake, and were hoping and wishing the best for the NZ’ers, which I though was a very nice sentiment.

We met up about 3:30 and jumped in the car to head back to the Hotel, and again negotiated the freeway of terror. The Hotel we’d booked was about 7kms out of the central city but this worked out pretty well as it keeps the costs down but having a car means we can go into town and the short distance doesn’t make for any hassle.

We spent the rest of the day watching updates unfold from NZ.