Much of our day yesterday was spent driving from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Amarillo, Texas. We decided to press on farther west instead of spending the night in Elk City. We did stop there to see the Route 66 Museum, then kept on driving to Shamrock, Texas to kiss the Blarney Stone (I never knew there was a part of that stone anywhere in the United States until this week). From there, we decided to head on into Amarillo, Texas, where we will be visiting Cadillac Ranch today and The Big Texan Steakhouse tonight. I’ll update with the day’s pictures this evening.
At breakfast in the hotel lobby, I thought I saw a rabbit. Then another, and another. I got up to investigate and learned that they are prairie dogs. Their little house holes are all over the back lawn of the hotel, and from our room, you can see their whole playground and watch them playing. Cheap entertainment that could keep me amused for hours- – but we had to press on with our day.
We started the day before the brutal heat set in at Cadillac Ranch, spray painting and using our best criminal art skills to add to the graffiti. In the Wal Mart in Amarillo, there are locks on their spray paint shelves, so you have to get someone to help you get the paint that you request! We got five cans and passed on the extra to some incoming artists as we left. I saw a woman with a large camera lens and knew she was the one who should inherit our paint!
No iconic landmark visit is complete without a quick kiss, so we smooched right there in front of God and all those buried Cadillacs!
And then we drove on to see the Second Amendment Cowboy before going on to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where we saw the largest Canyon in Texas, second only to the Grand Canyon in the United States. The landscape was gorgeous, and we saw one roadrunner, a kettle of barn swallows – including babies, Northern Cardinals, one live water snake, one dead rattlesnake (A Mohave rattler, I believe), and some Texas Longhorns.
I’ve started taking copious notes for a friend named Nick who just turned 66 last week and hopes to travel Route 66 this year to celebrate this year of his life. He asked me to “take notes,” so it gives me an added perspective to be thinking of someone else who might want to know some of my own observations of this journey down classic roadside America. Thus, look for daily ChroNICles, sidebar notes specifically with my friend Nic in mind. He’s recently published a book with slices of humor involving many of his longtime friends and acquaintances, so it only seems fitting to raise a glass in birthday cheers for his own ChroNICles that may melt as fast as the ice cream on his cake, but will hopefully be just as tasty nevertheless.
ChroNICle #1 – If you’ve never eaten “the special” breakfast in Tulsa, Oklahoma at a hole in the wall cafe with a waitress who’s the Queen of Bling and has a red tattoo of a Q and a Diamond right next to her left ear on her cheek to prove it to anyone who doubts it even after seeing the bracelets that line her arm from elbow to wrist and then, when you ask if she’s from Tulsa, she coughs the raspy smoker’s cough and emphatically says, “HELL no, I’ve lived here for 40 years, but I’m from Wisconsin,” as if you’ve offended her, you might want to try it.
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