Day two

Pictures from the top. A collection of windmills in someone's yard near Portales, NM., A feed lot just before getting to New Mexico. Lots of these in the Texas panhandle, but this one was huge. Probably half a mile long.
In Amarillo there were statues of horses everywhere.
Couple flower pictures from the Amarillo botanical garden.
The steakhouse in Amarillo.
The white deer in the square of the town named white deer.
the bottom two are pictures from Canadian , texas.
One is the wagon bridge that has been made into a walking trail.


We are in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Going to the caverns tomorrow. The national park is about 20 miles south of here, but its pretty hard to get a room there unless you book ahead way in advance.
Long time driving today, but we managed to stop some.
The idea of people making something out of their town was really brought home to us today.
We saw saw some really nice towns, and some real dumps. Only difference seemed to be what people chose to make out of it.
Canadian Texas is in the middle of nowhere, but has built itself up.
They took an old wagon bridge that went across the river and have made it into a park. That was neat.
Also lots of really nice yards and such.
They say it has 2000 people but it looks a lot larger.
Between Canadian and Amarillo were four towns, great cases in point.
First up was miami. Pretty area around there, lots of hills, nice ranches. They had a nice looking museum, nice county courthouse.
Then was pampa, which was pretty much a dump.
White deer was very small, but had lots of white deer statues around. They were trying to make something out of it.
Then was the town of panhandle which was pretty cool.
Amarillo had a great botanical garden. That is also where the home of the 72 ounce steak is. If you can eat it all, its free. We didnt try, but i did get a look at it. Huge.
From Amarillo to New Mexico was pretty dumpy. Lots of cattle feed lots. Thousands of cattle waiting for slaughter. Smelled bad. Made me wonder if i really wanted to eat meat again.
In New Mexico was stopped in Clovis and Portales briefly. It was starting to get late in the day by then. The GPS led us astray a couple of times, but we saw some nice historical buildings.
Going through the desert between Roswell and Carlsbad, it was raining. Just seemed ironic.
We are going to the caverns early tomorrow.