Amarillo, TX

#133 (December 11, 2022): We continued driving east on I-40, passing lots and lots of New Mexican mesas and huge cattle ranches. We stopped at the roadside attraction, Cadillac Ranch, in Amarillo, Texas, just a few minutes before our campground. For the next 30+ minutes, we had so much fun spray-painting the ten vintage Cadillacs, partially buried in the middle of a huge, flat field of dirt! We found discarded cans of spray paint from previous visitors there on site in collection bins. The kids had the best time spray painting whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted on the cars. The trickiest part was not getting the spray paint on ourselves since it was a wickedly windy day. We laughed at how the cars, especially the wheels, looked so warped because of the innumerable layers of spray paint that they’ve collected over the past 48 years. When we were finished, we handed our cans of spray paint to arriving visitors, who were excited for the free gift. This was more fun than we anticipated!

We soon parked at the Big Texan RV Ranch and quickly set up camp so that we could catch the next Big Texan limousine (a black stretched Lincoln Town Car with a huge Texas Longhorn rack on the front hood) to the infamous Big Texan Steak Ranch, home of the 72 oz steak. We ordered fried pickles, fried mushrooms, baby back ribs, and a double-cut filet with sides for supper and Texas-sized pieces of chocolate cake and red velvet cake for dessert.

Although the meal was delicious, the best part in our opinion was the atmosphere. Chris and the kids enjoyed the shooting gallery and the giftshop’s 7-foot Diamondback Rattlesnake. During our meal, we enjoyed watching 3 guests take the 72-ounce Steak Challenge. A guest can prepay $72 for a chance to win a refund and thus a free 72-oz steak meal if they can successfully eat the entire meal in 60 minutes, while sitting on a platform stage at the front of the restaurant with timers overhead. What’s the catch? Well, the meal is Texas-sized: a 72-oz sirloin PLUS a shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad, and roll with butter! Only 11% of people who attempt the challenge succeed in winning the free meal, but the other 89% get to pay $72 for this Texas-size meal and take the leftovers home for later. Not too bad of a deal!

Of course, with every challenge, there’s always a record holder. Ironically, the record holder for the Big Texan challenge is a thin 120-pound mother of four who completed the challenge in 4 minutes and 22 seconds! What?!! To make the story even crazier, she not only ate one meal in 4+ minutes, but she also then continued to eat a total of three complete meals in less than 20 minutes!!! That’s a total of 13.5 pounds of steak, 3 shrimp cocktails, 3 baked potatoes, 3 salads, and 3 rolls with butter! Unbelievable! You can watch the champion, Molly Schuyler, on YouTube.

#134 (December 12, 2022): Today was a day to stay home, focus on work and schoolwork, and decorate Christmas cookies. Nice!