Welcome to Amarillo... Our First 24 Hours...
If you ever had the good fortune of visiting the fourteenth largest metro area in Texas and the most populous in the Texas Panhandle, then you have stumbled upon a little slice of heaven with a temperate semi-arid climate called Amarillo. Known by a variety of nicknames ("Yellow Rose of Texas”; "Bomb City”; "(Former) Helium Capital of the World”), Amarillo is growing and has become the undisputed economic center of the region. As we rolled in yesterday, it was the first visit for any of the Four Nomadic Hippies. Well… to be honest… Tads wasn’t sure if he had been here before or not.
If you are ever looking for a drive that can best be described as "plain,” then traveling west along I-40 from OKC fits the bill superbly. Plain may be an exaggeration… it is a boring drive. The kind of drive that one can zone out for long stretches. It is three hours and 49 minutes of flat land on a tract of some of the worst roads of the Interstate Highway System we have encountered thus far (Dwight D. Eisenhower expected more…). During one of our "pit stops,” Elizabeth and I commented about how far we could see on the horizon. I don’t know for sure if that was somewhat breathtaking or excruciating. I would lean towards the latter… A town could be seen on the horizon, and it took a half hour to get there.
Did you know that the Texas Panhandle is windy? Like Iowa windy after doing two lines of cocaine… The kind of wind that beats down on your very soul as you look up in the sky, teeter on crying, while silently wondering how a person could have made the conscious decision to settle here. Don’t get me wrong, our first impressions of the city aren’t bad, but the wind… We had better get used to it as Amarillo is our home for the next month. Still, we must anticipate that any extended time outside will result in windburn. Here’s to bringing the sweaters back to the front of our closets.
One of the first things we learned about Amarillo is that there is an unwritten rule that any place of commerce offering propane refills sends its certified staff to refill home at 5:00pm. I called or visited seven establishments and got the same response. Very disconcerting, to say the least… even more so when I have seen it done enough times that I could fill our tank myself. Finally, I called a Tractor Supply Co. on the south side that must have a bunch of non-conformists employed. They had three employees… yes, three… that were authorized to take on the oh-so-daring task of propane refills. Somewhat tired and agitated at this point, the propane lord who helped me did get a bit of my well-hidden sarcasm that comes across as low-level ineptitude. Remarking about the distance one can see on the horizon in the Panhandle, I boldly predicted that a person could probably see 300-400 miles (which was met by a puzzled and disgusted look). Quickly, the propane gentleman inquired about how long we would be staying in the area. After telling him for a month, he suggested attending a minor league baseball game. My response was somewhere along the lines that it was terrific that they started the season in early February (opening day is April 6th) to indulge the passion of area baseball lovers. My final dose of sarcasm was when the meter clicked off and read that 19.9 gallons of propane had been dispersed. My response was, "Huh… I always thought our tank was twenty gallons.” I sometimes wish I was a better person.
Arriving at the campground after dark, we were able to set up and settle in for the night. It was cold, and finding propane to keep us warm in "The Wonderwall" was a piece of good fortune.
We were ready to take on Amarillo when we woke up this morning. We all got ready and jumped in the car to explore and make quick money on DoorDash. One of our "dashes” took us south of the city to Canyon. On the way back, we encountered a mammoth piece of tumbleweed. Blowing out of the ditch on our left (due to… you know… the wind), we didn’t have time to avoid it as it hit the front corner of our car on the driver’s side. It made quite a noise on contact and got stuck. When we stopped the vehicle to examine it, we discovered it had impaled the front quarter panel. The silver lining was Ivy’s excitement at seeing tumbleweed for real for the first time. Building memories…
Even with all the trials of our first 24 hours in Amarillo, Elizabeth’s hyped-up notion that sunsets in the Texas Panhandle are breathtaking was spot-on. Funny how these little things from life on the road can so quickly wash away the negatives.
But… the wind here is brutal.
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