Sorry for no posts on Thursday, folks.  Wednesday evening turned out to be… exciting.  You’ll hear all about it in our Albuquerque to Flagstaff post in the next day or so.  For now, though, we’ll backtrack to Oklahoma City and our trek across North Texas.

As we departed Oklahoma City, we had plans to see a couple sights during the trip to Albuquerque.  Bec, in our “where should we go,”-post had commented that we should go see the Cadillac Ranch, so it made the list.  We also wanted to see the restaurant with the “free” 72 oz. steak dinner.  So found them on the map, and headed out.  As it turned out, both were in Amarillo, TX. 

The drive to Amarillo was long and boring.  As we departed Arkansas, the land becomes increasingly flat and generally unremarkable.   This trend continued into Texas.

Once in Texas, we saw a couple things we did NOT intend on seeing on our journey.  The first was a crooked water tower.  It kinda reminded me of the leaning tower of Pisa, for obvious reasons.

And just past this, was the second largest [free-standing] cross in the Western Hemisphere, and the largest in Texas.  Standing 19 stories tall, we could see it from miles and miles away.

We continued down the interstate until we reached Amarillo and the Big Texan Steakhouse.  This was no misnomer.  It was big.  It was Texan.  It was a Steakhouse.  I’ll let the Wife tell you about the restaurant, but we had a nice “little” lunch special there, before pushing on toward the Cadillac Ranch.

The Big Texan is on the east side of Amarillo, while the Cadillac Ranch is on the west side.  It took us longer to find than we expected, too, as it’s really not marked.  It’s just… there… waiting for you to come and discover it.

So we did.

I had heard of the Cadillac Ranch, but had never really known what it was.  It’s ten Cadillacs buried in the ground, tail up and hood down.  Yup.  It’s just weird.  You can read the whole story here.

So we popped in and started taking pictures.  There were spraypaint cans around for one to make new markings on them.  We didn’t feel comfortable, though, so we just took pictures and left only footprints.

It’s really only a 15 minute excursion, but it’s well worth it.  It’s right off the interstate about 3 minutes, and you can see it from the interstate.  If you’re ever passing through, it’s almost obligatory to make a stop, now that you’ve been informed, I’d say.  =)

And we snapped our last pictures, and we were off.

From there, we jumped in the car and headed out toward Albuquerque.  Amarillo is almost exactly halfway between OKC and Albuquerque, so it made a convenient waypoint for us.  Another 275 miles and we would be there. 

Before we knew it we were entering New Mexico. 

For as far as it was, it really was an easy drive.  It was also our longest day on the road, so it was nice to be pleasantly surprised by the smooth rolling.