Everything's Bigger in Texas

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That's not a lie, every word of that title is true.

But first, before I arrived in Texas, we stopped in Santa Fe. It has quite distinct architecture, any new building that is built there has to be designed to a very strict code of how it should look as evident in the pictures. A few things of note there was the spiral staircase inside one of a church, it has no internal supports and is quite a feat of engineering. Also the amazing Spanish food that we had in the town square, there were vendors set up around the place selling all kinds of delicious treats, some of the best lemonade (not like fizzy drink but traditional lemonade made with lemons and sugar) that I've had was there. Just an interesting little stop on the way to Texas.

After crossing the New Mexico/Texan border, the first thing I noticed were a LOT of wind turbines. Something quite familiar to me from a design course I took last year. In one particular group I counted about 64 of them! The power production of these things would be huge and a big improvement to current power generation techniques. To see them in such large numbers is impressive and a move in the right direction.

We also stopped at a place called Cadillac Ranch. In a random field, some people decided it would be pretty cool to bury the nose of about 10 Cadillacs into the ground so that their tails stuck up like fins. The idea is you take a spray can and graffiti on them. Put your name, your country, or whatever you want! Some of the guys even decided to climb up on top of them!

Later that afternoon we arrived at our hotel for the night in Amarillo. It was called the Big Texan Inn. The entire place was decked out like a a western town on the outside, and in the rooms there was pictures of western scenes and you had to go through saloon doors to get to the bathroom.

That night we went for dinner at the Big Texan Inn Steakhouse (right next door). They have available, for willing participants, something called the Big Steak Challenge. A mammoth 72 oz (~2kg) steak that had to be eaten within an hour, plus a plethora of sides that were to be consumed as well and if successful, the meal was free, if not, it's about $70. I was at first signed up to do this but I wasn't feeling the best so I decided to pull out. And I'm glad I did! This thing was huge! Just an insane amount of food. We had three people from Contiki attempt it (Troy, David and Brendan). All unsuccessful though...we all put in a bit of money before the challenge in case they didn't finish so they weren't hit with $70! They didn't finish and they were all sick though, what a great way to start of the rest of the night at Midnight Rodeo.

This was the cowboy night club I mentioned earlier that we went shopping for clothes back in Cortez. A LOT of cowboy hats, a LOT of cowboys, and the endless supply of country music. Not a night club in the general sense of the term. And don't worry, they allow people over 18 in to "party" but not to drink. We did some line dancing and got involved with the Texans! It was a lot of fun. The drinks that people were buying were so cheap as well. Unbelievable compared to the prices in Australia!

The next morning was once again the regular 7:45am bags to bus (gotta love those early starts!) ready for our trip to Dallas, the place where President Kennedy was assassinated.

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Comments

[Guang]

1) yes!!!!!!!!! wind turbines ftw 2) lol andrew. even on holidays you're thinking about engineering. quite sad actually. 3) what about the cowgirls? ;)