A quick overview of the pretty boring (and totally gray) day:
Albuquerque to Amarillo: Shy of 300 miles. All interstate. Spent most of the time with podcasts and looking ahead to the week after next--where will we be on Memorial Day? Looking like Hot Springs National Park....
Arrival in Amarillo at 3PM, with a few stops for lunch/dinner at 3:30, provisioning, and searching for a new tire pressure gauge. One VERY disappointing Roadfood.com destination: Dyers BBQ. Looked much better than it tasted. Very tired, overcooked, and not great cuts of meat. Can't figure out their "Best Ribs" awards. And, yes, each plate came with potato salad AND coleslaw, onion rings AND Texas toast, beans, and apricot sauce. Wears a person out thinking about it. Shoulda gone to the Big Texan to see if anyone was trying to eat their 72 oz steak dinner in 60 minutes and get it free. (Note: Don't try this lightly. Management watches you to be sure you eat all of it, gristle and all, and if you don't, you have to pay $54.)
An exciting moment today: we figured out a way to have chapstick easily reachable in the cab by both driver and passenger (rather than rooting around in purse). Here's our on the Road "Mod", shown by Carol Merrill.
Cadillac Ranch (no, not MUSTANG Ranch!)
Here's our one tourist activity today. And I'm even cheating by quoting someone else on the attraction.
From Roadside America:
The Cadillac Ranch, located along the tatters of historic Route 66, was built in 1974, brainchild of Stanley Marsh 3, the helium millionaire who owns the dusty wheat field where it stands. Marsh and The Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, assembled used Cadillacs representing the "Golden Age" of American Automobiles (1949 through 1963). The ten graffiti-covered cars are half-buried, nose-down, facing west "at the same angle as the Cheops' pyramids."
In 1997, development creep forced Marsh to move the entire assemblage about two miles further west. The line of cars is far enough out in a field to allow for suitably bleak photography. The distance from any authority also encourages ever-mutating layers of painted graffiti, which Marsh doesn't seem to mind.
I'm so sorry we missed you. Boy, do I get the camping vs traveling vs being loose thing. It's much harder when you travel like you do, with a set time schedule. We just try to stay loose and open to whatever comes up, but it's easier for us as we have nowhere to be!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the road reports, I'm always inyerested, especially in the Diners, Drive Ins and Dives that aren't quite all they're cracked up to be!
Kate cholulared.blogspot.com