A Swing through the Panhandle

It's Thanksgiving time again, and John and I headed out to west Texas to see my mom. We always try and take a new route out here, so this time, we decided to go explore the Panhandle of Texas a bit.

The drive out to Amarillo was easy enough - an hour's drive down to hit I-40, then it's a straight shot into Amarillo. We got into Amarillo mid-afternoon and stopped by the famed Cadillac Ranch our way into town. You can see it from the highway, but you could drive right past it and never see it (which I have done).


The 10 Cadillacs are nose down in a cow field. When this art installation was first done, the Cadillacs all had their original paint jobs. But now, people have covered them in spray paint and graffiti and actually ripped off giant chunks of the cars. You are now even encouraged to paint the cars and leave your mark. There were empty cans of spray paint all over the place and someone was spray painting when we were there. I don't have anything against spray paint or graffiti but I would have liked to have seen the cars in their original state. The cars now seemed like a monument to urban decay.


Thanks to letterboxer jbkokopelli, we took a tour of quite a few other Stanley Marsh 3 art installations. The next was "Floating Mesa," a mesa with a sky-colored fence wrapped around part of it so it looked like the top part was floating. And we also saw The Giant Pair of Legs. This is a pair of legs, also out in a cow field, that was supposed to look like the remains of some old giant statue. In fact, Stanley Marsh 3 had a fake historical marker made that talked about how the legs had been the inspiration for the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley - “I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, stand in the desert....” Of course, this poem was written in the early 1800's, so the whole thing is a big joke. Loved it. Again, the legs have been creatively painted by sightseers.


Stanley Marsh 3's Cadillac Ranch has inspired a few copycats - there's now a Slug Bug Ranch about 20 miles east in Conway, and there's a Combine City on the southeast edge of Amarillo. We ended up skipping the slugs bugs but had to see the combines. We really enjoyed those - all 12 are in their original colors, probably because I don't think many people know about this place, it's way off the beaten path. Of course, we found out about it through letterboxing.


We also wanted to go see Palo Duro Canyon, Texas' largest canyon. It's only about a half hour out of Amarillo. So we spent one morning there letterboxing and exploring. It was a pretty spot, with lots of red rock.


When we left Amarillo and headed for San Angelo, we took another detour over towards Turkey, TX. Our friend wronghat had placed a box there that we wanted to find. Plus, there was a Bob Wills Museum there we were hoping to go to. Well, unfortunately, the museum was closed on Sunday. But it was a cute little town


and we found wronghat's letterbox on a lovely little trail on the edge of town.



Our letterboxing adventures that day took us to a spring, a couple of canyon overlooks, and into several interesting old towns.


We finally had to stop letterboxing and get on with our drive to Abilene that night. The next day was a quick drive into San Angelo, with a quick stop for a Boots Tex box in a park outside Buffalo Gap. Unfortunately, the box was gone but we got in a nice little walk (the weather was in the mid 70's so it was a perfect day to be out).

Thanks to all the Texas letterboxers for leading us to such interesting places! And a happy Thanksgiving to you all!