Panhandling

Today we drove up through the Texas panhandle - the Llano Estacado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_Estacado).  We stopped at colorful Palo Duro Canyon State Park (the Grand Canyon of Texas) south of Amarillo, TX. Hot, but nice! Kris helped Katie do a Junior Ranger thing, and later Kris and I did a quick scramble to a shallow, but tall cave. A little while later we stopped at Cadillac Ranch, that Route 66 (now I-40) icon west of Amarillo.  We did not have any spray paint, just some Sharpies, to contribute to the "artwork".  Later we stopped at the (free) Window on the Plains Museum in Dumas, TX.  Nice, but we did not have much time there (or anywhere). One of the reasons that we went this route was that Karen and I read about the Panhandle area in a book about the Dust Bowl (called "The Worst Hard Time", mentioned in a previous blog entry).  As the book mentions, the Panhandle area is mostly quite flat, treeless and quite windy. That said, the interstate and the towns we saw probably did not resemble the 1930s that much. We did have some nearby rainstorms blow up quantities of dust as we crossed the Oklahoma Panhandle into Kansas - it was not Black Sunday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_(storm)) by any measure, but it did give us a bit more respect for the area.  Later, I was reminded of the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0zSB2WEtwU). We also wound up driving by the wreckage of last Sunday's spectacular, fatal train crash in the Oklahoma Panhandle (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-06-26/oklahoma-train-crash-investigation/55837244/1).  We have stopped in Liberal, KS, a hub of Wizard of Oz activity (we even saw a bit of a rainbow on the way to town).  Tonight at supper we heard country music on an AM station and saw someone with spurs on his cowboy boots - at a Chinese buffet!