April 18, 2010 – Cars, Legs, and The Air Force Base

Today we played tourist on some of Amarillo’s Roadside Attractions.

Our first stop was Cadillac Ranch.  Ten Cadillac's buried nose down in the field.

  

It was really interesting to see these but we had to step around all the mud…   I am attaching two links that will tell you the history of these cars.  Check it out:

http://www.libertysoftware.be/cml/cadillacranch/crmain.htm

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/TX-CadillacRanch.html

Our next stop was the Helium Monument.  Did you know that Amarillo is the helium capital of the world? (Neither did I.)

First the info:

 

The Monument:

This Monument is also a sundial.

The numbers surrounding the monument.  The shadow appears on solar time – really cool!!

This monument is huge – notice Andy near one of the legs:

Our next stop was at the Hugh Pair of Legs.  They are just in a field and from what I could gather, they were designed by the same person that did Cadillac Ranch.  How funny is this!!

 

We stopped for lunch at the Big Texan Steak Ranch – home of the 72 oz. steak:

Here is the 72 oz. steak (that would be quite a few meals for us – LOL!):

And this gentleman in the red took on the challenge which is to eat the 72 oz. steak and trimmings in one hour and get it free.  If not it is $72.00 (that’s $1.00 per ounce – WOW!).

Cannot tell you if he did it or not.  According to our waitress, about one in eight that try, do succeed.  Can you imagine that much food in one sitting – oh my…I would be in pain, lots of pain.

Anyway, we had buffalo burgers there that were WONDERFUL!!  Would recommend this place to everyone.

Our next stop, well, here is the story.  Fifty years ago, Andy was stationed at Amarillo Air Force Base for training (for a few months).  The base is no longer there so we tried to find where it might have been.  After driving all around the area, we found it.  Can you believe the main gate of the base is just 1/2 mile from the campground.  And we can see the base from our motor home.  How funny is that!!  The gate is no longer there and many of the buildings are also gone.  The remaining buildings are used for businesses and for the Amarillo College.  We drove through the streets and it brought back so many memories for my Andy.  I am sure he never realized that 50 years after he was stationed here, he would be back in a motor home…

As we were riding around trying to find the base, we ended up on this road where the cow was on the other side of the fence – LOL:

 

And the fields were full of these little guys – prairie dogs – how cute:

We stayed for a while just watching their antics.

And our last stop was “The Bug Farm” – 5 Volkswagens Bugs buried nose down in the dirt.  Not sure of the story on this one but we just had to see it.

What an interesting day!