Amarillo

Writing about Amarillo feels like deja-vu.  I was here for five days last summer when my Ford Escape blew a gasket.  I got to know the town then. At least this time I was here for better reasons.  I just wanted to chill.  Hiking in Palo Duro State Park (a state park I highly recommend to anyone) with 90F under full sun didn't sound very pleasant.

The hotel room was quiet.  The tenant next door with his beefy Harley had already left when I got up at 7:30am, just in time to watch the beginning of the Robert Mueller testimony before Congress.  I didn't even hear the Harley rider leave.  I must have been really tired!

What a great excuse to sit in a cooled hotel room and listen to history in the making, although I know that my Trump-loving friends and family will disparage the man who seemed to stumble with nervousness before a grueling partisan Congress.   The testimony was still on-going when I checked out of the hotel at 11am and spent the rest of the day just chilling in town, trying to get caught up with reviews, emails and articles to read before that final push on to Arizona.

There is still plenty of construction around Amarillo.  I-40 on the east side is still closing one lane, and detours in downtown are still on-going.  What is taking so long for these projects?

My first destination was a new brewpub in town, the Pondaseta brewpub on 7500 SW 45th Avenue.  This is the newest one in town, having opened up late last year.  I wasn't really in the mood for beer soearly in the morning, but by noon I was willing to try a flight of their wheats, stouts, porters or whatever else was on the taplist.  I was the first customer in the place.

It's an inviting place, no doubt, with all new furnishings, but I was turned off by the "no dogs allowed" policy.  The place doesn't even serve food!  I sat outside in the dog-friendly patio, but there was little shade to keep me cool, so I only stayed as long as I could finish a flight of five beers.  The beer was decent, but I didn't want to sit in the hot sun just to drink beer.  I paid and left.  I decided to have lunch on Old Route 66 in town, Smokey Joe's.  I had wanted to eat somewhere on Route 66 last year when my gasket blew.  Today was make-up.

I came at a good time.  Few people were inside.  Several bikers and a few families were all outside in the shaded patio where Zeke was allowed to sit with me.  What a relief, especially after that snotty treatment I got at Pondseta about dogs.  I had a tasty (albeit salty) patty melt and iced tea (I was beered out) and sat in the shade for almost four hours, just chilling.   I never got any slack from any server for staying there so long.  I left when employees began setting up for an evening event.   By then the inside was busy and I had to leave.

Now what to do? I was worn out from hiking but had no place to go, so I went back into Amarillo's downtown area, those three blocks on South Polk street where the Acupulco Mexican restaurant and Six Car Pub is.  A few other bars and restaurants make up this small party center. I'd been to Six Car last year and knew it was dog friendly, and I went back again today to sit outside and enjoy shandy for a few hours.  I hadn't planned on staying there that long, but the place provides free wi-fi for its patrons and I was busy getting caught up with reviews and this blog.  It wasn't busy, so I took an empty table away from the crowd and sipped my shandy while writing and watching the kids play on the patio. I left when trivia started in the early evening.

Where had time gone?  I walked two miles at 9pm to nearby Ellwood park, just to get my two miles in, and when I got back to the Honda parked on S Polk  Street, the Six Car pub and surrounding bars were closed.  Everyone had gone home.  The downtown was quiet. Not even homeless men stumbled down dark alleys.  The only life I saw was a black-white stray cat eating droppings on the Acupulco restaurant's patio.  I hadn't even made plans for a campsite and drove toward Palo Duro state park to hike a trail early in the morning before the 95F heat.