Amarillo

Day 2 found us driving between Flagstaff and Amarillo (660 miles, with side trips); with the exception of Albuquerque there is stunningly little in between. The high desert of Arizona slowly melds into the slightly less high mountains of western New Mexico, which themselves slowly meld into the high, flat plains of Eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. To be frank, it's stunningly boring. Here are some pictures and stories:

Just outside of Flagstaff* is Meteor Crater. It's an enormous hole in the ground, which as you probably surmised was created by a meteor tens of thousands of years ago. The picture below doesn't really give you a great sense of scale, but you see some stuff at the bottom of the crater? That's a 6 foot tall fence, which is about the same height as my dad. Meteor Crater turned out to be the second and last stop on the "Giant Hole in the Ground" part of the tour.


This is a picture looking back towards Flagstaff taken from the rim of the crater. Yeah, that's 35 miles away. Flagstaff sits about 7000 feet above sea level, and I think the higher of the two peaks here is 11,000. We crested the road between them around 8046 feet on Monday night. In general I think this is my best picture in terms of capturing the enormity of the West.


This is "70s man", just standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. If that doesn't ring a bell, think about the Eagles song "Take it Easy". One and the same. Just to the left is historic Route 66, which is arguably the most disappointing part of the trip so far. There's nothing else to note about Winslow.

We ended up eating lunch at Mr. Powdrell's in Albuquerque. My dad got the pork ribs while I got the beef ribs, figuring we were in a beefy part of the country. Not to foreshadow, but I think this trip will permanently settle the beef vs. pork ribs debate across the entire country. My meal wasn't bad: I liked the sauce, but the meat wasn't fantastic. The ribs were also fatty and stringy. On the other hand, my dad's ribs were really good: very smoky meat, nice balance of meat and fat... very good. The downside is that they were coated in a sauce that would have been better on the side. Overall a B grade for Mr. Powdrell's (ambiance was nice, except we were the only ones in the place at 1:30 pm).

Sticking with the food story line, my last tale from Day 2 deals with The Big Texan. Calling it a restaurant kind of undersells everything it has to offer: restaurant, shooting gallery, motel, stable, trading post... it really earns the name "Steak Ranch." The food was actually pretty bad, but the ambience was A+++. There were cowboys walking around singing. Tons of taxidermy. And, it has a stage where you can sit and try to eat a 72oz steak in 60 minutes. Succeed and you eat free. Fail, and you pay $72 for the steak. Our waitress says that roughly one person tries each day, and only 1 in 10 succeed. Sadly no on tried while we were there.

Day 3 takes us from Amarillo to Columbia, MO via Oklahoma City, Wichita, Topeka, and Kansas City.


* The distance that is associated with "just" can vary, but in the Southwest I think the minimum unit of "just" is 50 miles.