McLean to Amarillo
Actually, although there's a lot of barbed wire in the museum, it's actually more of a general fencing museum... some of the wire on show doesn't have any barbs whatsoever, and they also have machines for erecting picket fences. And branding irons, nothing to to with fencing except that the fences held in the cattle so they could be branded...
It was honestly interesting though. The people who put the collection together believe that barbed wire and fencing technology, along with windmill-driven water pumps, were the things which really tamed the Wild West.
Back on the old road, we stopped at Britten for long enough to get a photo of its leaning water tower (deliberately made that way to attract tourists), and while I was at it, I got a shot of just how flat and vast Texas is...
... this is Marlboro country...
On reaching Amarillo, we were faced with a choice between following old Route 66 to the letter, or visiting the Big Texan Steak House, which used to be on the route, but when it burned down, was relocated near the Interstate. Suspicious, but there you go. We had to go for the steak house, because this is he place where if you eat a 72oz steak dinner (including salad, baked potato, bread roll and dessert) within an hour, you get it for free ($50 otherwise). 72oz is 4 and a half pounds. A lot of newborn babies are lighter than that. We didn't take up the challenge - I had sirolin, Debbie had T-Bone, and the whole lot came to under $30 which I just can't get used to. Great steak too. Debbie wouldn't enter the building until I'd cased out the joint and made sure she could get through the meal without setting eyes on their rattlesnake.
The Big Texan has a motel tagged on. It's a bit of a tourist trap - mocked up as an old western town, so of course we wanted to stay. We checked in straight after lunch, allowed our steaks to digest a little, then headed south on a detour from Route 66, to the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. It's a canyon, it's fantastically scenic (the pictures don't do it justice), and unlike the Grand Canyon you can drive around part of the canyon floor in your car -- just the tonic when it's too hot to think about walking more than 500 metres, and one of you is petrified of snakes.
The drive up and down the canyon is a lot like the hill scene in Duel, and you can't help but be reminded of the canyon stages in Out Run, especially with those blue and white "Sega Skies":
In the evening, we head off for the cinema ("movie theater"). We found one in the yellow pages in the motel room, and since it was in a mall, decided to go there on spec, and if we needed to kill time, well, the American mall experience was ours for the taking. We haven't done a lot of driving in the evening up until now, so tonight was the first time we've driven towards a sunset -- and what a sunset, but alas I didn't take the camera.
Half an hour of driving around the mall area shouting at each other, and we eventually found the cinema: with all it's lights out, and looking as if it had been closed down for quite a while. Instead we drove about 20 miles down the Interstate to another cinema we'd seen on the way to the canyon, and watched Hollow Man; worth it for the turning-invisible effects alone.
On the way back, there was forked lightning to our North, and more forked lightning to our South - I assume it was two seperate storms, since we didn't experience anything close up, and it wasn't raining.
Night driving in Amarillo (and probably elsewhere in the USA - I can't say yet) is terrifying. At first we couldn't work out why it was. Perhaps our headlights were a little weak? On the way back from the cinema, we realised: even on the Interstate, even on unlit sections of road, there are no catseyes to lead the way. Neither are there reflective markings on onramps and offramps. It makes things very tricky, and it seems very backward for a country that prides itself on progress. I suppose nobody wants to pay the extra taxes that'd pay for them.