May 26-29, 2018

May 26-29, 2018

We must be true westerners now. Living in the old west town of Tucson, we are spending the holiday weekend in another cow town, Amarillo, TX. We have relatives there and we are being joined by several of Aimee’s out of town relatives, in particular an aunt and cousin from Chicago.

With the special guests we spend Sunday and Monday visiting Amarillo’s tourist attractions. Number one undoubtedly is Palo Duro Canyon, billed as the second largest in the US. I am not sure what criteria was used as Arizona alone has several that beat it for size, depth, and beauty. Even so, it is a surprising geologic feature in an otherwise utterly flat prairie. We do the circle drive stopping at a couple viewpoints and the Visitor Center. With the holiday weekend it is packed with families camping, despite the near 100 temps.

 

My sister-in law then gives us the dime tour of her Alma Mater, West Texas A&M University in nearby Canyon, TX. This small well-manicured campus is the home of the Buffs.

Amarillo has several quirky attractions breaking into its top ten. We stop at one known as Ozymandias on the Plains. It is a pair of gaily painted legs with an official looking plaque alleging that the English poet Percy Shelley traveled by here, discovered these ruins of a statue of Ramses (Ozymandias in Greek), and was inspired to write his famous poem of the same name.

The next day while Aimee accompanied the ladies for some antique shopping along Historic RT 66, I went to investigate something that has intrigued me. Amarillo is the home of America's National Helium Reserve. Since Helium is light and easily escapes into outer space, virtually none exists on earth. Our only source is the radioactive decay of Uranium. By a quirk of nature some accumulated in a local natural gas formation. For nearly 100 years, it was cryogenically separated in the area. A large stainless sundial (Helium was first discovered on the sun by spectroscopy) was erected as a monument to its local history. Just to confirm I am old, this year they are opening the 50-year time capsule from the 1968 commemoration of this Helium Monument.

In the discovery mode, on the way home we stopped at the giant pistachio statue in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Aimee wouldn’t let me take the nut orchard tour, but we did graze through the samples in the gift shop before buying a bunch to take home.