Amarillo, The Big Texan, And What We Should Have Done

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23386 – 1192

Here’s The Haps:

So there are a lot of places in Texas we wanted to see, we saw, and still want to see. We went to a place that used to be on the old Route 66 and moved to the I-40 frontage road which runs roughly along the same path. Some of my readers may not know about Route 66 but it was a very famous highway here that ran from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California. It’s known for its quirky roadside attractions. The route was decommissioned as a US Highway quite a few years ago when the Interstate Highway system took over but people loved its quirky attractions and it remains. You can find information all over the Internet about it and many people, my wife’s cousin being one of them, have pieced it together and driven it all the way. It’s kind of a thing in itself, really. Gift shops all along the way have replicas of the original highway signs. I can’t think of too many roads that people are so nostalgic about. There was a TV show about it when I was very little where two guys driving a Corvette and working odd jobs drive up and down solving crimes and having adventures. This post is not about any of that, really, however. Except for the Nat King Cole song that I really like which is at the end of this post.

Since we were going to be tourists we did some unabashedly touristy things like staying at The Big Texan Steak Ranch Motel. They are a huge complex with a horse hotel, an RV park, and cabins and Airstreams to rent. The restaurant is home to the 72-ounce Steak Challenge. There was a time I might have tried it but I really would rather enjoy my food. The challenge is to eat a full steak meal, to include a 72-ounce steak (a little over 2 kilos), a baked potato, a side salad, 3 large shrimp, and a bread and butter roll in under an hour. There have been 92,541 attempts and 10,281 winners. One of the winners was a female competitive eater named Molly Schuyler who ate 3 of the meals in 20 minutes. Wow. Not for me.

Now, I did have a steak there and it was done to perfection but it was only an 18 ounce and to be really honest, the seasonings weren’t that great. At least not to my taste. What it may have lacked in flavor the place made up for in atmosphere, though. As with every — really — every, place we stopped in Texas, the people were the nicest people on earth. Even the ones who looked grumpy and mean turned out to be charming and helpful. Everywhere in Texas we went it was like that. Of course, we were tourists but still…

The decor in the room was great. It looked rugged and western but there were plenty of outlets and USB ports and the check-in and out process was pretty much fully automated.

Unfortunately, the bed was not as comfortable as maybe it should have been, but still, this was a great way to start our travels in Texas.

One of the things that we didn’t do but didn’t really miss much was visit an art installation called Cadillac Ranch. An eccentric millionaire got together with some local artists and buried 10 Cadillac cars halfway into the ground. I saw it when I was in Texas on business in the 90s, which is when I took these pictures. I guess it’s one of those “see once” types of attractions. Both times we were through there it was kind of cold and windy to walk out in a wheat field to look at some wasted, graffitied cars so we decided to skip it. Here are a couple of pics from when I visited years ago.

We weren’t missing anything much, really.

The one thing we do want to do is go back and see the Palo Duro Canyon. We regret not knowing about it or we might have planned our trip differently. The second largest canyon in the country and very different from the Grand Canyon, we want to go back and spend some time there. They also put on a musical in the summertime about the history of Texas. By everyone’s accounts, it is worth seeing and it’s the kind of thing we really like to do.

So this was day 1 of our trip and yesterday was day 2. Next post will be day 3 which was a real highlight in my mind. But now, take a trip with one of my Mom’s favorite singers, Nat “King” Cole.