The Ranch and the Canyon
October 11, 2023 – Day 13
We took showers this morning. Or maybe we took them yesterday, this morning and quite possibly another one. We’re never really sure until someone stinks. Showers don’t sound like a big deal since we’re hooked up to City water, and we have our grey water valve open we can never run out of water for a shower. But it is a big deal when you’re traveling with only 70 gallons on board. Normally we’re parsimonious with water. This stop we didn’t do military showers we took luxuriously long ones where we didn’t turn off the water. At all. Until we were done, of course. Ah, just like home. Did we mention that we have a gas-fired tankless hot water heater and 70 gallons of propane? Would could have shower for hours. And hours. Probably days.
Since we were having some water issues, Susan thought it was a good idea to read the part of manual that dealt with plumbing for the RV. She discovered that we’re supposed to run all the taps at once to clear air out of them. We tried that with the water pump and it seemed to help but only just a little. When we hooked up to city water it had the same problem where it would spurt, start and stop, spurt, stop and start again. This was less than ideal. Following what she read in the manual we decided to open the taps again and ran them for about 10 minutes. And you know what? The manual was right. Imagine that. After the Paul’s spa time shower, he went outside to try assess if the water pump work without spurting. Excitedly he ran back in saying, “Bird Alert!”
An unknown bird was on the ground. Susan grabbed her binoculars and almost as if on cue, it hopped onto the wood next to the RV, nearly at eye level and just 6 feet from us! Who needs binoculars when the bird is this close! This photo wasn’t taken with Paul’s high zoom camera, just an iPhone. It’s the camera you have that takes the best picture. Hooray! Another life bird and this one was the Curved Bill Thrasher.
We had a nice slow morning and set out to do 4 things:
We messed up in the planning stages (hey, we’re still learning!) We should have hit the Bug Ranch on the way into Amarillo. Going to visit the Slub Bug Ranch would have added about an hour driving time to the day, plus time to visit to yesterday’s travel day to backtrack. We thought we’d do it today. But we scratched it because it was just too far to backtrack and we’d have to give up time for other locations.
We were turned away at the RV museum, it was closed! We really need to not only find these gems but find out when they’re open. It would be open tomorrow but we were leaving early in the morning for Grants, NM. So, off to the Cadillac Ranch for our first stop of the day.
Paul had heard about the Ranch in the late 70s, almost certainly from an issue of the Car & Driver magazine, which he used to avidly read. He can’t spell Cadillac so he’ll be calling it “The Ranch.”
CADILLAC RANCH, BUILT IN 1974, is the product of eccentric helium millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 (he didn’t like the Roman numeral III and found it pretentious). In collaboration with The Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, Marsh funded the placement of ten graffiti-covered Cadillacs half-buried in a dusty Texas field. The cars are positioned nose-down and face west “at the same angle as the Cheops’ pyramids.” The cars were actually moved two miles further out in 1997 to avoid the expanding city.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cadillac-ranch
Paul was surprised reading the above. He didn’t know about the spray paint until a few years ago. Indeed, the Wikipedia entry talks about the original colors. It just goes to show that both the intrepid travelers, and their readers, need to do their own homework regarding the facts that they present.
Now, almost 50 years later, he got to visit it. But first, a tourist trap gift shop that was on the way. Inside they had lousy t-shirts and trinkets. Lousy even for a tourist trap. Worse there were no good refrigerator magnets! They had fun stuff outside though.
The visit to the Ranch did not disappoint. Visitors are encouraged to spray paint the cars in a form of participatory art. But you shouldn’t paint the street.
And you certainly, positively, definitely, never, ever, ever, “we told you not to do it” deface the sign telling you not to deface the street. Or the street. Under penalty of law.
What you can’t see is that these signs were at least 10 feet off the ground, to avoid them be defaced. Challenge Accepted!
Inexplicably, people left spray painted shoes on the fence. There were also spray painted locks, but that’s probably a thing that shouldn’t be.
You enter the property that the Ranch is on via a cattle gate. (See all the locks?)
The trailer in the background is not a food truck. You can buy overpriced spray paint there as well in addition to lame t-shirts and trinkets (Paul chose an awesome t-shirt, susan got a fridge magnet). Interesting, we figured there would be the “location tax” and spray paint would be a lot over market price. Nope. Spray paint was more than a dollar less than Ace Hardware per can!
The Caddys did not disappoint.
Paul immortalized his undying love for Susan with the the completely original P • S inside a mostly heart shaped outline.
Susan went around adding color where color was needed. Given how windy it was we were both surprised we didn’t end up being painted with our respective colors.
Paul absconded with a piece of “Fordite” but I guess it should be called Ranchite or something that starts with Caddy. (susan here: Caddordite, perhaps?)
But wait, there’s more. Paul is a fan of Justin Johnson, an amazing guitarist, who embraces Americana folk guitar. Here he is at the Ranch.
Next up was the Bug Ranch! Nahhh. The car museum? Nope. Susan suggested the Palo Duro Canyon. We tried to get reservation to camp there but none were available. We chose the next best thing, driving through it. This was better than more museums.
Paul wanted lunch, he always does. And, he wanted dinner it town so he suggested lunch and dinner in town. Susan pointed out that the coach was on the way to the canyon (Hint, the RV park is in Canyon Texas less than 15 minutes west and pretty much on the path to the Canyon.) Guess where we stopped for lunch?
Palo Duro Canyon
The Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States. It’s pretty spectacular and we both encourage you to visit it. (susan here: I’ve seen the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen Palo Duro. Palo Duro is better partly because you are able to drive down into it unlike the Grand Canyon.)
You start at overlook. We’ll back up. You start with paying $8/person and then proceed to the overlook. No senior passes or discounts here (cheeky of us to complain about that, huh?) There was a gift shop and a small museum (not another museum!!!) We were getting pretty museum’d out, so we breezed through it and probably missed a lot of interesting factoids. We’re okay with that.
We did learn about the 4 geologic layers that are clearly seen. These rocks are old. Freakishly old.
There were all sorts of hiking trails one of which went 500 feet down to the bottom and back up again. They warned you it was hard, and that you had to climb back up. Mandated was 3 quarts minimum of water per person. And as it was approaching 100°F both of us bet you’d need more than 3 quarts of water. We’d love to come back when the weather isn’t so hot to explore these trails. Did we mention it was hot?
So, lemonade from lemons, we drove around in the air conditioned Jeep and looked at all the awesome scenery. Warning this is going to get picture heavy.
This is a canyon. Canyon are caused by water erosion. Flood markers were all over the place along with other warning signs. They weren’t kidding you could see where they had plowed the red dirt off the roads, just like they plow the sand off the roads in Provincetown. One sign which we didn’t get a picture of looked like it had been dipped in red muddy water.
We left the canyon and went into town for dinner at Feldman’s Wrong Way Diner. (cue friendly small town music) You know, there just has to be a story behind that name. We love adventuring but it’s also tiring, not body tiring, but new things tiring. There is just so much to take in. Don’t get us wrong, we know it’s a wonderful problem to have. But the new things come at us like a firehose.
The Eclipse
Paul did some early planning for the eclipse. There is some interesting news. Our campsite would be in Grants, NM. It is a long drive from Canyon, TX but worse the winds were picking up (cue ominous music). The RV park is about an 45 minutes from Grants where we planned to watch the eclipse. But now the forecast was for a 25% chance of cloud cover. Paul found a place almost 2 hours north of Grants that might have better weather and bathroom access, but the eclipse would be at 9AM. Even if we could brave the 25-35 mph winds and 55 mph gusts to drive to Grants it meant we still might not see the eclipse.
So there we were being battered by increasing winds and the winds started to shake the RV. Paul couldn’t sleep over the noise and the rocking so in the middle of the night he started looking at weather predictions and eclipse paths. Odessa, TX looked interesting with good weather and striking distance from Canyon, TX. We had no hope of getting an RV park reservation the day before an eclipse. Did you know that you’re allowed to sleep in truck stops in Texas? Cool, things were looking up! He still couldn’t sleep. A little after 1AM Susan bolted awake because the RV was rocking so badly (she’s a pretty sound sleeper so this is notable). We talked about staying another night and then trying for Odessa. Around 2am she got up and booked another night for the campground we were in. Then she remembered something she’d read: having the slides out will make the windy weather feel worse. She mentally apologized to the neighbors, started the engine and brought all the slides in and the RV was mostly still. Paul fell asleep almost instantly. Susan wasn’t far behind.
Daily: 0
Total: 1,815
Moving Miles/Day: 289
Overall Miles/Day: 156
Life Birds: 2 – Curved Bill Thrasher