So here's where we've been and what we've been doing... after driving thru Oklahoma to get to Dallas, we stopped a few miles away from the border to eat lunch in a tiny town called Caddo, OK. Apparently they used to have buffalo walk right down the main street! Anyway, for an itty bitty place it certainly had some fabulous barbeque and all the small-town charm you could cram in. The lady who owned the cafe directed us to the 5-and-Dime which we just HAD to visit, according to her. Glad we did, too, because it was one of the neatest old hardware stores either Doc or I had ever visited and the woman who ran it had hand-painted the almost 1,000 ceiling tiles in the store to restore it to its original splendor. In turn, she directed us to their town museum and library saying, "It's free, so it's well worth it!" The museum probably housed every item that anyone in the town of Caddo has ever owned, and the walls were lined with photos of goodness knew who, but Doc and I got a guided tour by the sweetest little old lady you'll ever meet. When everything was said and done, we spent about an hour in a town that takes 5 seconds to drive through.
After we got to Dallas, we spent a lovely couple of days with my great aunt and uncle, which was a real treat. I got to re-meet my Dad's cousins and meet their children for the first time. Completely delightful. Also managed to make it to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Trammel Crow Asian Art Museum. Both are must-sees if you are in the Dallas area and consider yourself to be an art enthusiast. They had the least Euro and Americentric collection of art I've ever seen. They had whole wings devoted to South American, African, Asian, and Pacific Island arts. So cool.
Post-Dallas we headed towards Amarillo, where we intended to have dinner with friends and stay in Paloduro Canyon to check it out as a stop for the new field studies course. The word Paloduro shall henceforth only be used as a swear word in my vocabulary. Dinner was great, and the canyon was pretty, don't get me wrong, but at what cost??? It was so windy all night (minimum of 30 mph with 50+ mph gusts) that Doc had a sprinkling of red dust from the canyon floor all thru his tent (despite having his rain fly on) and I had 1/4 inch drifts on my face (without the rain fly)! Long story (read that as LONG NIGHT) short, I spent a restless first 4 hours of the night and then transferred to the van, where I at least didn't have to get up and get a drink of water every half hour after swallowing dust. Grr does not even begin to cover our level of frustration or our lack of sleep. We toured the canyon this morning and then headed Westward for the next adventure, New Mexico. The photos are all Paloduro except for the last two, which are historic route 66 totally abandoned. Sorry for the long post to catch you up, but it only makes sense that my chronicle of a big state would be long-winded, right?
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