Saturday 11 April, 2015
DAY 5
Leaving El Reno
The girl with the
flatline tatoo at the desk of the Best Western had told us when we checked in
that the breakfast was 'homemade...eggs, pancakes, biscuits, fruit...homemade,' she said. Not exactly: white bread, grits, buns, pancakes, sweet rolls, really
dubious snake parts and a bowl of stony green apples.
We had already
checked out the in-town breakfast options; the most likely was closed Saturday,
open Sunday, and both Sid's Diner and Robert's Diner were dedicated to the
onion burger. So, forgetting for the moment that in Texas the next town is not
10-12 miles away but 40-50, we pointed at Amarillo.
An hour later we
pulled into Elk City where the highway-side choice was Arby's or MickeyD. We
circled around for the gas station and noticed a sign on the front of a
deceased Ramada, 'Cowboy Cafe'. There were trucks in the lot, a stuttering
neon 'open' in the window murk. All the servers were either softball women or
their daughters, and the tables were jammed with locals.
Very satisfactory
breakfast—rye toast glazed on the griddle with the hash browns, scrambled eggs.
Unfortunately Adri was past his coffee time and suffering the howling fantods.
Amarillo was the
solution to our wobbly morning. Beginning at Cadillac Ranch:
The unceasing
Texas mistral bounced Fisher-Price-coloured spray can tops through the furrows
as we watched our fellow visitors participate in what has long become
post-ironic performance art. I didn't survey the license plates of the dozen or
so vehicles parked at the roadside, but surely they were mostly out-of-state,
and on holiday, as we were.
The cars themselves
are significantly more aerodynamic than when they were planted in 1974
(relocated closer to the interstate in '97, further enabling the spray-art addiction
we were witnessing in all its compelling freedom.) In another twenty years,
Body-by-Fisher will be unrecognizably round.
As we left, four
bikers, two men, one woman, one too heavily clad for certainty were taking
pictures of one another with I-Pads.
Back into Amarillo to
check into the Baymont ($77 tax incl.) and then 25 miles south to Palo Duro
Canyon State Park, the second largest canyon in the US.
Palo Duro (hard stick) is 21
miles long and as accessible as a canyon is likely to be...lots of overlooks,
ranger station, gift shop, party pavillion, and off the road which winds down
to the canyon floor many campsite groupings and RV hookups. This area covers
maybe three or four miles at the Canyon's mid-point. There are mountain bike
and hiking trails snaking out from here. ('Warning: map is not to scale',
although it's likely that the high-water dipsticks at the bridges over the insignificant—in
April anyway—piddle winding its way along the bottom which were indexed to a
level higher than the Mazda are certain to be more accurate.)
Adrian unlimbered the
panoramic camera—four exposures on a 120 film (everyone below the age of film
is welcome to disregard arcane technical references,) and reefed it down on its
whimpering tripod (think watermelon on a stick.) And someday we will see the
pictures.
Our first Texas Longhorn
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