Roadtrip to Amarillo

I was looking over my Bucket List the other day and noticed that I have only completed 1 BL item this year!  I am not sure if I counted “go to a professional basketball game” as last year’s or this years, but since it was NYE, I think it was 2013.

So, only one BL item this is was unacceptable!  I do have some very valid excuses as to why I didn’t do much this year, but I wanted to finish off the year with a bang.  Next, I needed to decide which ones I wanted to accomplish on my limited time and budget resources.  A road trip sounded like a good plan and I had to decide on where to go.

I have always wanted to see the mysterious Marfa, TX lights and also Cadillac Ranch.  I had never been to West Texas and I figured while I am at one of them, I might as well go to both!  I am not sure if you are familiar with Texas, but you can drive for over a day and still not get out of the Lone Star State.  Marfa, TX is about 9 hours from Houston and Amarillo, TX (home of Cadillac Ranch) is about 8 from Houston, and about 8-9 hours in between.  Once I started to do the math and called around to check on hotels, I realized that 24 hours of driving in 3 days is not very fun and we wouldn’t get to see much.

We axed Marfa, TX and decided to only do Amarillo, TX on this road trip.  Why?  Because Marfa, TX doesn’t have much to do around it in the winter and Amarillo, TX had a lot more to offer.  I want to go to Marfa, TX maybe in the summer when I can have a longer trip and head to Big Bend State Park to swim/hike/explore.  Amarillo had two (three, but I only knew of two when we changed our plans) Bucket List items that I wanted to do, so it was an easy choice.

My friend Lili and her sister came with me on the road trip.  Lili is one of my 3 single friends I have left (yes, only three).  I headed to her house early on Friday morning (about 7:30 am) for the start of the trip.  We had reserved a car and had to pick it up; otherwise we would have left a lot earlier.

We had about an 8-9 hour drive ahead of us.  We were driving through Dallas and Wichita Falls, TX.  I was watching the Travel Channel (or one of those type shows) and saw a funny story about the World’s Littlest Skyscraper that was in downtown Wichita Falls.  You can read the full story here, but basically it was a scam that is the equivalent of $2M in today’s money (or $200K back then) that happened during the oil boom of Texas.

We couldn't find it at first but then I looked online and found a picture and was able to find the building quickly.  There is an antique store there today that allows you to go inside the ‘skyscraper’ and walk up the four floors.  It was super tiny!  The stairs took up a ¼ of the room.  It was really neat though!

After the skyscraper we went to visit the Wichita Falls Waterfall that is right off the freeway.  You can go above and below it as it falls into the local river (or canal?) that runs through town.  It is man-made, but still a really pretty waterfall.

We got back on the road and found this super cute pecan shop called Valley Pecans in Chillicothe, TX.  They had excellent fudge and even pecan flavored coffee!!  So good.  They also have cute gifts and books for purchase.

That was day 1 of our road trip to Amarillo!  Stay tuned for the bucket list items!