Amarillo Geocaches & Cadillac Ranch

Just west of Amarillo is a well known spot called Cadillac Ranch where 10 old Cadillacs are buried nose down.  The cars were moved from an earlier location to the present location so it would be out of town and visible from I-40.  The cars have been spray painted hundreds of times over the years.  Parts, windows and anything not nailed down have been taken from the cars.  Now the axles are welded so they can't be removed.

From Wikipedia: Both sites belonged to the local millionaire Stanley Marsh 3,  the patron of the project. Marsh was well known in the city for his longtime patronage of artistic endeavors including the “Cadillac Ranch”, Floating Mesa, “Amarillo Ramp” a work of well known land artist Robert Smithson, and a series of fake traffic signs throughout the city known collectively as the “Dynamite Museum”.  As the story went, Stanley Marsh 3,   quickly disregarding the “III” as too pretentious and using “3″ instead, would buy one Cadillac after another and when it was time to buy a new one, he would have the old one buried nose first on his land. However, the truth is, the Cadillac Ranch was a planned artistic endeavor. As of 2013, Stanley Marsh 3 does not own the Cadillac Ranch since his alleged sexual abuse of underage teenage boys.

There are two geocaches near the Cadillac Ranch and we picked them up today.  They had a high difficulty level, but were easy to find.  I had downloaded 25 other caches but they were too far away to search for them.  I found a number of caches in a row the last time through here and missed two of them due to high water.  Maybe I will get a chance to pick them up on our next trip to Amarillo.

Just down the road from the Cadillac Ranch is a RV park.  I don't know what the name of the park used to be, but it seems they renamed it to take advantage of the location near the Ranch.  What do you think?

The geocaching made us hungry and Gerry had a yearning for some Italian food so we checked the trusty Tom Tom GPS and found an Olive Garden restaurant down the road.  We got there a little early and it was a good thing we did.  By the time we left there were people waiting to be seated.  We ordered from the lunch menu and saved a few bucks and a lot of calories.  Both meals were very good and the salad was especially good.

The temperature is dropping like a rock outside and we have the fireplace and heat pumps working.  They are calling for freezing temps again tonight and I may have to disconnect the water hose.  It is time to head out of Amarillo and we will be on the road Thursday morning for Las Cruces, NM and hopefully warmer weather.