Blogs from Amarillo, Texas, United States, North America - page 2

Geo: 35.2072, -101.834... read more

Geo: 35.2072, -101.834... read more

Day 2 and still alive! Woo! 538.1 hard miles today. I got a later start this morning leaving Holbrook, AZ mainly because I couldn't move. Everything hurt when I woke up. Luckily, some coffee, aspirin and a hot shower and copies amounts of moaning/swearing got me going and by 6AM the Mothership was heading east again! Arizona was gone quickly but New Mexico took forever. It was so ungodly hot today and there is no shade to be had in that state. Generally I seek out said shade when I take my leg stretching breaks. No dice this morning though. I kept going long past the point where my back and legs were killing me in a vain attempt to find a small shady patch but I finally gave up and got off on a side ... read more

It's been a long but really nice day, except for an interlude when I was leaving Dallas/Fort Worth and discovered the Bluetooth in the Blue Bomber (henceforth known as BB my fake SUV) quit working! Now this is a tragedy, one worthy of many choice words from an old salt's naval vocabulary. BB's Bluetooth ties my iPhone and iPad to my car. No speaker phone, no streaming music, and no speaker phone (yes I said it twice). I hadn't realized I had gotten so attached to the Bluetooth in my car. Now that I have had to live like much of the unwashed masses I can tell you it ain't safe to use your cell phone while you are driving. Yes Yes I know most have figured that out by now but it still came as ... read more

I'm still loving the road trip on Route 66 with Sean! Today, we stopped by Amarillo, Texas, to take a break. We both love modern art, so of course we went to Cadillac Ranch to take some pictures - for those who haven't heard about this place, it's a very big sculpture located in the middle of a cow pasture, visible from the highway ; it's made of 10 Cadillacs half-buried nose-first into the ground, and spray-painted in various bright colors. The sculpture was created by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels in 1974. The cars represent the evolution of Cadillacs, notably the appearance and disappareance of tailfins on cars ; but what's even more amazing about this sculpture is that even if it's located on private ground, people are strongly encouraged to come and ... read more

Geo: 35.222, -101.831 We got up on Friday morning and drove to Los Alamos. This is where they designed and built the first atom bomb and the 2 bombs that they dropped on Japan. There is still a huge facility there doing research on all kinds of things. People were assigned to go there in the early forties and were only given an address in Santa Fe to report to. Once they reported in they were told how to get to Los Alamos. Their driver's licenses didn't have names on them, only a number. If someone was born there, their birth certificate showed a P.O. Box in Santa Fe as their birth place. People who lived around the area didn't even know that a huge facility had been built on top of the plateau. We visited ... read more