America's
Heartland- Amarillo, Texas
Hi everyone! At the end of November my coworker Dave and I spent
a few days in Amarillo,
Texas, up in the north panhandle. Wikipedia has some
excellent articles on Amarillo, Texas, and the Republic of Texas
of which Amarillo appears to be a part.
We had a very productive and fun visit, except for the 7 inches of snow
which showed up at the end of our trip. Here's our pictures and
stories.
First, here's where Amarillo is, up in the Texas panhandle.
It's lots of wide open spaces 'round here. During our drive
around we stopped by a cotton field for some action photos. Sorry
for the smudge on the lens.
Cotton fields. LOTS of them.
Lots of cattle
too. We drove down some roads for a few miles just to see what
changes, and what changes is not much - lots of open land, livestock,
agriculture and agri-buildings. Not much change but it's an
important place for all of us who eat things.
At one point we saw this weird airplane/helicopter thing - figure it's
one of those V-22
Ospreys.
After we concluded our business, we were told of the two main
attractions in the area. About 20 miles to the west of Amarillo
is the Cadillac
Ranch, a set of old Cadillac cars mounted in concrete in the middle
of a field. The cattle just hang around them. There's a
gate along the road which is unlocked, and does not indicate no
trespassing, so we went for a walk. It was about zero degrees and
the wind was whipping along at about 40, so the pictures may not quite
reflect exactly how freezing we felt.
Your intrepid reporter, trying to stay vertical, avoid the gaze of the
cows, and also ward off frostbite.
Dave trying valiently to appear calm in the frozen onslaught.
The other main attraction is about 40 miles to the east in Groom and is
the reportedly second largest cross in the western hemisphere, which
was built for the movie Leap
of Faith, starring Steve Martin. I don't know if it's the
largest but it's way big, about 190 feet. Read more on it here.
By this time the sun had gone down and it was even colder than above.
The photos are not great because we were shaking. Now that's cold!
After this we had dinner at a bar recommended to us as having great
steaks. The smallest they had was 20 ounces, and they had a sign
saying they would not cook them well done (not that we wanted them that
way). Excellent steaks, huge potato and salad, about $20.
We took leftovers home.
Well, that's it for our trip to Amarillo. They're really great
people, nice and inviting, but their land is very wide open and cold in
the winter. I used to want to see Siberia, figuring it would be
wide open, cold and sparsely populated. I no longer feel the
need, since I've been to Amarillo.
All text content and images on this and any and all subpages,
unless otherwise noted, are
Copyright (c)
2006, Alex Kuhn