US and us- Will we co-exist : To Amarillo and beyond.....maybe...the choices.....

Stayed at Tucumcari, and this seems to be a very sad place...many of the motels and fuel stops on the way in to town are abandoned, graffitied and some have been burnt down. Maybe the 9 deg c and drizzly rain did not help impressions.

Had another argument with Ms. Garmin (Our American GPS that came with the car) the only accent you can get with full instructions is the American one.... However this time, we had to rely on a photo of the TriStar Inn with an enormous wind turbine behind it, that showed where it was......

Local radio is occasionally listened to. Random selection of the stations .....the first one 88.3 Amarillo, immaculate Heart Radio a catholic station where if you call 888 8877120 you can get the exciting book Why be catholic? Call then and make a donation to spread the message. Then the discussion went to the contention that Face book is catholic and twitter is Protestant. Then it got scary....

Then the agricultural station;Liberty herbicides and liberty soy beans are the only product: the Meal market is good, corn is down, soy is down, wheat is down, mainly because of all the rain but there is also concerns about layer eggs goin up from 63 to180 cents and the talk of importing eggs from France due to an outbreak of a chicken virus. Decimating and worse the herds of chooks. A suggestion of avian flu?

Road disruptionTexas style. Contemporaneously noted. Here I stand on the I 40, where the speed limit is 75 mph.

The 75 mph I 40

At the border between New Mexico and Texas, the traffic starts to slow down, and stops...for the next several hours we and thousands of other cars and especially the big trucks are stopped dead....except for the sporadic 1-2 mile dashes. To only stop. It took 2 hours to get to the Roadworks zone..

For some, a bit of light relief. And the constable was quite philosophical about it, saying 'sometimes you just have a bad day'

Yep she's bogged.

As far as the eye can see.

Note the circling buzzards.

Finally after two and a quarter hours we get to the cause.....a semi that has run off the road in the opposite direction into the median strip and was bogged. The only rationale for stopping east bound traffic was for the (now) non existant recovery vehicles having use both sides of the Interstate.

An experience....

Finally arrived in Amarillo, we thought it might be exceptionally quiet because of an unintended longer than long weekend for Memorial Day, but alas, apparently it is always this quiet....Did the usual wander around and found a priceless cafe called Furrbies. It is at 210 SW 6th street. The two waiters were part time show girls winter and Taylor.....

Really good hamburgers, teeter taters (wedges) and onion rings (onion rings)

And the biggest cup of tea ....

Then went a bit out of town to see the Cadillac Ranch, which was a squalid disappointment ten 1960s Cadillac shells stuck in the ground, a big pool of muddy ground, just off the main interstate. There is better on the Oodnadatta track. Apparently it is appropriate to get your spray cans and graffiti the cars in situ...but the amount of dumped cans and other rubbish is disgusting.

Lubbock

About 110 miles south of Amarillo lies Lubbock. We tried our first AirBNB, the initial stages were a disaster booking three rooms a one large house in Lubbock. Fortunately Shawn, the owner managed to send his phone number to us ( it had to be broken up within the message to elude the AirBNB filters)and we found the place....called Ellis House, it was built in 1963' purpose built as a home for unwed mothers. Since renovated (moved the unwed mothers out) chooks in the back yard, huge communal living space, ....... Shawn is lovely, and seems to be doing alright though this and could not be nicer....Nathalie seems to like it, but Andrew thinks it's a bit creepy living in a stranger's home.

Got to see our first gophers though.

They are really good at hiding....

Lubbock is where Buddy Holly was was born and there is a memorial to him which we visited. On the corner of Buddy Holly Blvd and Crickets Ave, Lubbock

Love it is in fact a town or at the zoo in churches every three churches represented here....the last sentence was the talk to text version of.." Lubbock is in fact a town of a gazillion churches,nowhere every breed of church is represented here'. So I won't be using that again.

The buckle of the Bible Belt.

Shawn, our AirBNB host, tells us the Lubbock is the buckle of the Bible Belt. So that substantiates why there are of three hundred churches in this relatively small city. Many of the church buildings are not only huge, but quite splendid looking.

The National Ranchers Heritage Centre is in Lubbock. Somewhat similar in concept to the Longreach Stockmans hall of fame, and Soverign Hill mixed together, this is far better...about 20 acre site and has thirty of so period buildings from the mud brick through to the El Richo peoples' houses. It was facinating the display of saddles, carriages, barbed wire, and yes, even the lever action rifles.

So next time you are in Lubbock Tx. Make sure you visit this place.