Thursday, August 15, 2013

once a month

This is a post that's taken entirely too long to share. I started it last week. So there's that.

It's funny to think I thought I'd write more than once a month on this blog. Although, it's early in August and school has yet to start, after which time I'm sure I will have much to share in terms of my internship and Welcome Week and fun things like that.

I'm at work or I'd be able to include nice photos along with this post, so I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. This post is rather long overdue seeing as the biggest adventure to be blogged about was like 3 weeks ago...It's really difficult for me to keep track of the days when it's summertime. July also went by in a flash, so I'm still in denial that it's pretty much mid-August. So whenever it was, I took the biggest adventure I've taken in a long time!

I took a spontaneous road trip to the panhandle of Texas with my roommate and best Baylor friend, Kelly. She's a real peach and lets me be weird and indulges my crazy ideas. Although, this idea was hers. It was a Thursday. It was a great day because I got a bunch of free things: a Baylor Theatre fleece zip-up, McAllister's sweet tea, a slice of pizza from Nizza Pizza. The best part was that I had Friday off from work because our office was moving buildings, so I would have just been in the way. So I got off work at 3, and Kelly picked me up so she could get some things from my office for her future teaching career and then we got free tea and pizza. We came home and decided to try to check something off our collaborative senior year bucket list. We thought about going to Independence to picnic and explore the original Baylor campus and go to the Blue Bell factory since it's not too far from Independence, but to go on a tour on Friday we would've had to schedule it by 3 the day before [aka Thursday, aka the time that I got off work and we were getting tea]. So that idea couldn't happen that weekend. Thus, the idea to go to Amarillo and see Cadillac Ranch and other random roadside attractions came into fruition. We managed to throw together food and essentials fairly quickly and create some semblance of directions all getting us on the road by 5:45 that evening. Like whoa. We got kolaches for the next morning at Czech Stop and drove through lots of nothingness. We didn't really have a plan for the night; I might have thought we could just drive through the night and nap, or snooze at a rest stop. We did try the latter, but freaked ourselves out and decided it wasn't a good idea to do that. The search for the least sketchy, but cheap motel began and eventually we settled into an American Inn in small town Texas, about 2 hours away from Amarillo.
The morning greeted us much quicker than desired, and it became a full day of driving. Literally spent all of Friday in a car, minus an hour or two. Bleck. It was really a great day though! We originally planned getting into Amarillo and hitting up Cadillac Ranch and then going to New Mexico since we would be about an hour and a half from the border. But, we made the split decision to go to Oklahoma instead to be in two places at once (on Kelly's bucket list) at the border and that took longer than we thought. Ha. Then we took a recommendation from Kelly's brother to go to this state park called Palo Duro. Aka the second largest canyon in the U.S. or so it claims. It really was a magnificent place, so much red dirt and beautiful rock formations. I like nature. I was really glad we took that detour even if we didn't plan it so we got there when it was hot and we couldn't hike because Kelly is in a boot because of some weird injury. Ha.
Finally, we got to Cadillac Ranch. It was great because since it's one of those famous roadside attractions and on the path of Route 66, there were a lot of people clearly making the stop on their own huge Route 66 road trips [see people wearing shirts emblazoned with roads and maps and "Route 66"]. There was also this cute musical group playing the song "Route 66" in front of the cars. Gosh, I wish I could put pictures! Perhaps I'll create a separate post for some pictures since I know everyone who reads this doesn't have Facebook.
Anyways, after we visited Cadillac Ranch, we stumbled upon this hilarious roadside restaurant that seemingly encapsulated everything that is so Texan. 72 oz steaks because everything's bigger in Texas. Don't Mess With Texas trash cans. A swimming pool shaped like Texas. A motel that looked like an old Western town. A giant dinosaur wearing a cowboy hat. Texas brewed beers. It was fantastic. We spent a lot longer there than anticipated, so a visit to the parody Cadillac Ranch (VW Beetles!) was decided against and instead we hit up downtown Amarillo. We found some beautiful churches and lots of horse statues. Much like the race cars that were in Indianapolis a while back or the panda bears in DC. There was one painted like an American flag that we took pictures with. Haha. We ventured around some more and found a sign that marked the area of Amarillo that was on Route 66, which was in this cute area of town that if it weren't so far from Waco, we probably would have stayed to explore later. But alas, we needed to get home, so we embarked on our return journey. We got home sometime after midnight, so for real: in the car a good 2/3 of the day. Whoo!
So that's my adventure to middle of nowhere Texas for you. I will try to remember to post pictures when I'm home from work today!