Well, Howdy Pardner! It’s time to get your cowboy on and spend some time with Barbara and Brian seeing what mischief those little doggies got into while straying eastbound in the general direction of the Windy City. Oh-yeah – this is part 1. Yeehaw!
April – May, 2022
Amarillo, Texas is home to the Cattle Farmer’s Association, who at one time banned Oprah Winfrey from town for encouraging her audience to eat less beef. Brian had a customer whose headquarters was in Amarillo and he spent more than a few nights in and around the town (just ask him sometime about his first trip to the jewel of the Texas Panhandle), but he had never spent any time sightseeing. Thanks to Atlas Obscura, the Crazy Tourist and AllTrails we found a thing or two to occupy our time.
At 120 miles long and averaging 6 miles across, Palo Duro Canyon is Mother Nature’s second biggest hole in the ground in the United States, and, as if you couldn’t guess, its size is only exceeded by the Grand Canyon itself. Referred to as Texas’ Grand Canyon it is home to hoodoos (look out Bryce Canyon National Park!), many, many caves to explore, campgrounds and glamping (yup – the Texas Dept of Parks and Recreation has installed old fashioned trailers complete with air conditioning, kitchens and comfy beds on site and for rent). Wildlife within the Park includes the Palo Duro mouse and Texas horned lizard both of which are endangered species, and a visitor might observe wild turkeys, white-tailed and mule deer, coyotes, bobcats, roadrunners and many species of snakes and lizards. There are miles and miles of biking and hiking trails for exploration and enjoyment.
The most popular trail is known simply as Lighthouse. It’s a 5.7 mile out and back moderate hike – the tougher part of the hike is the trek from the base up onto the formation that gives the trail its name.
We’re pretty sure that it is illegal to visit Amarillo and not have a meal at the Big Texan. The steakhouse and gift shop (with adjacent motel and nearby RV park) has gained notoriety for its 72-ounce steak dinner challenge…the rules specifically state that you must swallow the steak, a shrimp cocktail, salad, baked potato, roll and butter in an hour – simple right? However, since its inception in 1962, odds of completing the challenge are a mere 11% (10,077 winners/87,000 attempts) – interestingly more women than men have eaten the entire meal in the allotted time. BTW – if you fail, the tab is $72. We had the good fortune (?) to observe 2 men and 1 woman attempt to complete the challenge – all failed. And, for the record, our meal was excellent!
There are any number of non- traditional sights to see in and around Amarillo…
The Britten Water Tower is located on Old Route 66, now along-side US Interstate 40, in Groom, Texas. Wait a minute – Britten Water Tower in Groom, Texas? Entrepreneur Ralph Britten built a truck stop on this site, and from 20 miles away hauled in a second-hand water tower, set it at a 40-degree angle, and painted Britten USA on the side as a marketing ploy. Passing motorists would stop to sound the alarm of the falling water tower only to be assured that all was fine and “oh by the way would you like a meal or fuel or both?” Actually worked out pretty well – at least until the truck stop burned down and was not to be rebuilt.
Take a look at this ingenious use for old bikes…a merry-go-round! Wondering how long it took until the kids were bored?
Just south of Amarillo, two gigantic legs, unmercifully spray painted, can be seen from the roadway. A plaque near the gigantic legs reads: “In 1819, while on their horseback trek over the Great Plains of New Spain (now Texas and New Mexico), Percy Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein), came across these ruins.” Here Shelley penned his immortal lines, among them: “I met a traveler from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert…” And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Have these legs stood the test of time or are they a more modern installment? Reality or urban myth?
Whatever is fact this is Ozymandias of the Desert…
The Floating Mesa was the creation of eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh, who has also given us Amarillo’s famed Cadillac Ranch. Whenever the sky is the right shade of white there is an illusion that the top portion of the mesa is floating. Today wasn’t one of those days.
The 2nd Amendment Cowboy pretty much speaks for itself.
The Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument was built in 1968 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of helium. It is a six-story high stainless-steel structure containing four time capsules, three of which form the legs of the monument, the other standing erect. The capsules are intended to be opened at 25, 50, 100, and 1,000 years. Each of the columns is filled with helium. The time capsule opened in 1993 represented our dependence on natural resources, and the one opened in 2018 featured industry and the use of natural resources.
Just a few miles east of Amarillo and along Old Route 66 sits Slug Bug Ranch – an installation consisting of decayed Volkswagen beetles. No one really knows the when or why or even who owns the property. Cars are partially buried at approximately 45-degree angles, their noses facing downward into the dirt, left to disintegrate over time, with visitor participation encouraged in the form of spray painting.
According to Atlas Obscura ” A West Texas farmer’s wife said it as kind of a joke when her husband Orville Ladehoff didn’t know what he was going to do with a broken-down old combine. She said, “why don’t you just bury it.” That was the spark that ignited the farmer’s crazy idea — not to bury, but to “plant” combine harvesters, many at a 45-degree angle, on his two-acre plot of land just south of Amarillo. And14 combines later, Orville had himself a “Combine City.”
Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation and sculpture created in 1974 that was the brainchild of Amarillo millionaire Stanley Marsh who commissioned a local art group – the Ant Farm – to complete the installation. It consists of ten vintage era Cadillacs buried at a 45-degree angle nose-first in the ground — spanning successive generations of the car line from 1948-1963, and the defining evolution of their tailfins. Painting graffiti on the cars is strongly encouraged and the cars undergo ever-mutating layers of paint.
Why are the vehicles at the Slug Bug Ranch, Columbine City and Cadillac Ranch buried at a 45-degree angle? Theories are plentiful on the internet. As is often the case, the Urban Dictionary sexualizes the term and gives special meaning to gay and lesbian uses of the phrase. A Christian interpretation advises that at an angle of 45 degrees, we look both up and out, and this is a good paradigm for life – we can view both up: seeing and loving God, and out: seeing and loving our neighbor. There’s the theory that it is a sign of massive change, and then again, it’s near impossible to bend backwards more than 45 degrees without falling over. Barbara’s theory is that it’s a quirk of quirky Amarillo locals – they felt compelled to bury something and we guess it just looks right to them. Brian wholeheartedly agrees!
And finally just a bit of whimsy from the Texas Panhandle…
What fun we had hanging out in Amarillo – days were filled with so many interesting sights and places to find and visit. We loved our hike in Palo Duro Canyon, and would encourage visitors to the area to take some time to explore what a fine job the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife has done in making this park a special place.
Barbara and Brian
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.“ – Henry David Thoreau
Aimless Wanderings 
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