Saturday, June 30, 2013
What should we do in Amarillo? We knew nothing about this panhandle city of about 190,000 established in 1887. It has always been and continues to be a major cattle-feeding and shipping town. Turns out that there was plenty to do.
Horses are beautiful animals, but they aren’t our thing. Dan never took riding lessons, and while I did, the horses never listened to me. I would end up stuck in the mud with a horse that wouldn’t move or end up in the opposite direction I was intended to go. To put it bluntly the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum wasn’t exactly a place we would ordinarily visit. The building was lovely, and it offered an appropriate venue to honor the equine champions as well as the people who helped them reach their potential. However, it wasn’t a museum we would re-visit.
On the other hand, we weren’t expecting much of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, TX, about 30 minutes outside Amarillo in the town of Canyon. The Museum sits on the campus of West Texas A&M University and was really a fascinating place. There was far too much for us to see in one visit and is a place we would definitely go back to should the opportunity ever present itself. We particularly enjoyed the exhibit telling the Panhandle Petroleum story. It included amazingly complicated maps that identified who owned what property and oil rights above and underground.
One exhibit featured windmills used to draw up water from an underground aquafer that runs under the Great Plain. (There are windmills all over the place in Texas drawing water up from the aquafer. What will happen when the aquafer is depleted, since it is not renewable?) The Great Plains is the largest geographic region in the United Sates. It stretches from about Edmonton, Alberta in Canada to San Antonio, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River. It is defined as being a semi-arid, flat, treeless grasslands. It accounts for nearly half of the nation’s irrigated farmland and would never have happened without windmills drawing water up from underground.
The exhibits were well designed and varied. There was a gun exhibit which was larger (big surprise there) than we’ve seen before. It included a reconstructed pioneer town, oil derricks, dinosaur skeletons, a special exhibit on pop art, and much, much more. Too much in fact for me to review in full.
Close to the Museum is Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Just like the Grand Canyon, the land all around it is completely flat and the Canyon appears almost out of nowhere. While what we saw today is nothing like what we saw at the Grand Canyon, it is a pretty place and much greener than the land surrounding it. It was the site of one of the last battles between the U.S. Calvary and the Indians. The Calvary burned the Indian’s supplies and took 1,400 of their horses. Left with no choice, the Indians drifted back to their reservations. We took about an hour or so to check it out the Canyon and then headed back to Amarillo. We had one more sight to see, “quirky” Cadillac Ranch; another Route 66 tourist stop.
Fortunately, Cadillac Ranch was located close to our hotel. Just outside of town, on a frontage road, in the middle of a dirt field you’ll find 10-graffiti covered vintage Cadillacs half buried hood down in the ground. We had first inadvertently gone to a souvenir store called Cadillac RV that featured several old Cadillac’s and a huge cowboy touting the 2nd Amendment but were politely redirected to the correct location. Sure enough, we weren’t the only crazy people seeking out this wonder of the world. There were a lot of people there along with spray cans of paint. You can actually smell the paint from the road. You had to be careful not to be sprayed upon as young and old alike expressed their artistic selves. Clearly all of this paint is helping keep the Cadillacs from rusting into nothingness.
Dinner was Tex-Mex, at a place called Jorge’s Mexican Restaurant. It was very busy, and Dan and I enjoyed our dinner of fajitas with mixed vegetables. We were more than ready to get back and relax, but I suggested we stop at a Western store called Cavender’s. It was a costly decision. I’m sure it is partly due to the fact that we are heading home and leaving the West behind, but Dan and I both purchased “cowboy” shirts and Dan a belt that we hope he’ll actually wear when he gets home. It is definitely cowboyish, but not over the top – we hope. I suppose the same can be said about our shirts. We’ll see.
Tomorrow on to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
BY THE WAY WITH WENDY & DAN 