After a hearty breakfast at Whataburger (there’s one near you! Sure, unless you live in Colorado) we headed to Cadillac ranch, another Route 66 legend.

The kids and I went there on our last trip, but James had never been. He was a little disappointed in the number of caddy’s buried in the dirt, but he went gung-ho with the spray paint anyway.

No one will ever think to climb up there and paint over his name, unless they read this. No spaces on the cars are hallowed, you might paint you name and have it painted over before the steel fence door whacks onto the gate behind you, but at least you tried.

Once again, the only thing holding these cars together at this point is the paint, so go do your part!

We brought a can with us this time, but there is always a can or 10 lying around half empty.

Mr. Otter skipped the painting, but bunny came along.

Bethany found a can of neon green paint that was awesome, Hannah struggled with her can and amazingly only sprayed the cars.

The ranch was made in 1974 as an art project by helium millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 (he prefers 3 instead of III.) By the way, did you know that Amarillo is the helium capital of the world? One wonders why it doesn’t float away.

Anyway, the cars are caddy’s ranging from 1949 through 1963, they are half-buried, nose-down, facing west “at the same angle as the Cheops’ pyramids.”

At any rate, it is fun to be a graffiti artist and not get into trouble.

After that we went to Palo Duro canyon (Palo duro is Spanish for ‘hard wood’ a reference to the mesquite and juniper trees in the area.)

It’s the Grand canyon of Texas, like the Colorado monument is the Grand canyon of Colorado. There were some nice views from the visitor center, see?

We drove down into the canyon and saw a dugout that is a replica of the one made by an Army scout named Goodnight.

He partnered with a friend and they made the JA ranch, which is still operating and has some longhorns near the park entrance for show.

We drove and crossed creek after creek, the road runs through them instead of over them. Flash floods are common and I guess they decided that bridges would wash out. This park (and so many others) was carved out by FDR’s CCC men. We have the Civilian Conservation Corps to thank for Red rocks, Mt. Evans road and more in Colorado, and here in Texas many more parks than just this one, but it’s nice that they made this one for our viewing pleasure.

We drove all the way to the end and then looped around and headed back home. We took the scenic route (287) through Dumas and Dalhart, went through a bit of Oklahoma and then back into Colorado. Here is a wind farm we passed up and Hannah, passed out.

When we got to Lamar, CO we made a U-turn after seeing this.

Hey, I saw that as a picture in a Ripley museum once.

I love that they have to define what petrified wood is on the sign (‘built of wood that was turned to stone’ – and I thought petrified wood was just wood that was scared!) Just goes to show, you never know what you are going to see when you go on a trip with me! Oh, and we did turn off the road for a short time to see if we could find the prairie chicken viewing area in SE CO, but alas, we just saw rows and rows of corn. The chickens look like this:

At some point I’m sure there was a blind set up that we could have viewed a prairie chicken from, but we were more interested in getting back home.

That was a whirlwind trip, but fun!