The day started great, with typical fantastic weather and some time to explore stores in Santa Fe that were closed yesterday (a Sunday).
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| La Fonda |
We had breakfast at the French Bakery again. Don't judge. It was really good. Then we hit the stores and left town for the drive to Amarillo.
As we drove through New Mexico, I was ready to declare this the most boring drive I had ever encountered. There was nothing but desert and straight roads for a couple of hundred miles. The wind made driving a challenge but not too bad as I maintained a 76 MPH pace. When we got to Texas for the last hour, 2 things changed. First, the desert turned to farms and ranches. For someone with our background, farms are interesting.
Some of the farms were wind farms. One was the single biggest wind farm I had ever seen. It went on for 36 miles and was several layers deep. There were hundreds of windmills if not into the thousands. It was massive and there were power lines going everywhere.
That made the second big change seem appropriate. The winds were howling across the interstate. Driving became tedious. It was no longer boring but it wasn't fun either. The wind farms are in the right place. There is nothing to break the wind except the propellers on the windmill. This is how flat one field was.
We noticed a group of cars gathered seemingly in the middle of nowhere along the access just before Amarillo. Our habit from the national parks is to look for the object of the attention of any group of people. In this case, it was something that I recognized but had forgotten was in Amarillo. It was Cadillac Ranch - an artistic concept of burying 1/2 of 10 Cadillacs in a field. We obviously had to visit it. It was a cultural icon.
We then went to dinner looking for a Cajun restaurant. We (again) had crawfish etoufee. We (again) were disappointed. As Susan said, "it is crawfish etoufee without the crawfish". That wasn't the only problem. So off we went to a Dairy Queen and ice cream. Again, Susan got it right with her comment "you know, this is a great value - 2 cones for $3.88".
She was not ready to go back to the hotel so we drove to the Route 66 historic district. It was historic only in that it was old and decrepit. A truly pathetic attempt at a tourist attraction. We gave up and went to bed.
Susan’s quote of the day: “Amarillo is a dump." When Cadillac Ranch is the highlight, there is a problem. To be fair, Amarillo is a big city and we saw only a little piece of it.
The highlights - Cadillac Ranch and wind farms.
The regrets - None.
Today's direct miles from hotel to hotel - 272
Today's miles on side trips - 43
Today's miles driven by Paul - 315
Today's miles driven by Susan - 0
Today's hours in car - 5
Total Miles Hiked - 0.3
Cumulative direct miles from hotel to hotel - 4,330
Cumulative miles on side trips - 3,465
Cumulative miles driven by Paul - 6,813
Cumulative miles driven by Susan - 587
Cumulative hours in car - 161
Cumulative Miles Hiked - 52.1
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