Day 32: The Texas Pan Handle

The area surrounding Amarillo Texas is pretty sparse. What there is however are a few roadside attractions based around burying vehicles up to their dashboards at a 45 degree angle and letting people spray paint them. The first and most famous of these is called Cadillac Ranch.

There are at least two copycat attractions in the area, though we only got to see one of them- the VW Slug Bug Ranch

There is also one featuring Combine Harvesters, though we missed that one. They are low brow art at their finest. They celebrate what they are burying by featuring them in a different light to draw your attention to them, then they allow you the visitor to partake in the art of them by decorating them however you please. This mostly takes the shape of writing your name and the year you visited, but that's just as valuable to the more "artistic" contributions made for we give greater value to artistic works when someone signs and dates it. It's such a human thing to do- To leave our mark; To say I was here. I opted for some stripes in fluorescent pink from a can left over by some other American artist circa 2008. I'm sure Jon n' Harriet 10/08 will be covering it shortly.

We stayed with a really awesome Couch Surfing host named Carl in his house just outside of Amarillo. Carl grew up in the pan handle of Texas and loves to take road trips like the one we are on. We did what we seem to do will every couch surfer we stay with- swap stories. He tipped us off to Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest Canyon in the US, second only to the Grand Canyon which we hit in the morning. Carl has a really sweet Pug mutt named Buddy and Justine and him got some serious bonding in.

Carl was great and I hope he comes to stay with us in Oakland on his next trip. We shoed him some pictures of Burning Man and I think we'll be seeing him on the playa in the near future.

On our way out of Texas we went to the canyon which was beautiful as advertised. We hiked a lovely mile long trail and back and took in some serious pretty.

All through the day we were followed by vintage Jaguars with right side steering wheels and British plates. After stopping our car in a lookout in the canyon, we got to talking with some of the drivers of said foreign vehicles and learned that they were part of a 60 car caravan of British Jaguar enthusiasts who shipped their cars from London to Chicago and were driving Route 66 from Chicago to LA. Brilliant.

We got to Albuquerque and were greeted by Justine's parents whom I adore and love learning from. We had dinner, petted their cat Blacky Browny and then drove to the Airport to pick up my mother and sister. The introductions went very well as assumed and then we all retired for the night.

written by

JRadhirsch on October 2, 2008 from Amarillo, United States

from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip

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