Amarillo, Texas 4-29 to 5-2 and Guymon, Oklahoma 5-3 to 5-12

 

You have to see Cadillac Ranch when you're in Amarillo.  It's just a bunch of half buried Cadillacs with, literally, hundreds of layers of paint on them.  People come out in droves with spray paint and just keep painting over what the last person painted.

Had to enjoy a steak dinner in Texas!!  Canyon Ranch Steak house did not disappoint.  We watched the Texas Rangers play baseball on a huge screen.  The filet was tasty and soft as butter.  The roll was a sweet one.  In fact, they used the rolls to make croutons for the Caesar salad.  The wine glass cleaner in the bottom left was fascinating to watch it twirl around the glass.  The dessert for me was the cowboy cookie and it was yummy.  Mark's dessert was a Blue Moon!!

We had to work at it, but, we found route 66!!  It's in the historic district of Amarillo with bars and restaurants.

We enjoyed the beautiful views at Palo Duro State Park.  It's known as "The Grand Canyon of Texas."

There was water along some of the trails.  It was fun to see these ladies walking their dogs through the water.  You can see the trails in the photos on the left.

That's it for Amarillo, now we are on to Guymon, Oklahoma.

When our friend, Sheldon who owns a construction business, heard we were going to Guymon he told us "You are close to being on a moonscape in Guymon !!   We built a Holiday Inn Express there about 12 years ago…."  Well Sheldon, your Holiday Inn Express looks great.  But, we do have some interesting sites like Goats crossing the street and a drive in theater that is now the RV park we stayed in.  I think that car by the screen was like the 1960 Chevy I drove as a  kid. 

Guymon does have a nice golf course - Point Rock.

There is not much to Guymon, so we took a trip out to nearby Liberal, Kansas.  First stop was breakfast at The Pancake House.  Pancakes are a big thing in Liberal as they have a Pancake Festival.  This started in 1944 with the racers holding a frying pan and flipping a pancake while they run!  We love to try the house special so we split The Apple Pancake.  It is huge. They served it with butter, syrup and cinnamon and sugar but it was so sweet all by itself it needed no help!

We all know that Dorothy lived in Kansas.  Somehow the people of Liberal, Kansas got the Governor, John Carlin, to proclaim it as the location of Dorothy's house.

It is not the best of tourist attractions but there were some interesting things.  The house at the right is the house they walk you through on the tour package.  The top left is the actual house they used in the film.  Obviously, they just used a model sized house and enlarged it for the movie!

The MGM studio sent them a photo of Dorothy's room and they recreated that in the house.  Then you took the yellow brick road (which they creatively got people to donate by putting their name on a brick) to The Land of Oz.  They started with the tornado and wind blowing through the windows.  Sadly, it did not get much better after that.  But who can resist taking a photo of Glinda, the good witch.

One more unique sighting was this squirrel who rummaged a bag of crackers out of the trash.  He had no problem with Mark getting close.  He just shoved those crackers in his mouth as fast as he could.  

That's it for Guymon, Oklahoma. Now, we are on to Cimarron, Kansas.