June 12-13, 2023 | Photo Album

Wendy and I head west each summer for a vacation. We timed this year’s outing so that we could rendezvous with friends in Manitou Springs, Colorado. That led us to revisit Santa Fe, New Mexico for a few days and then stop in Trinidad, Colorado on our way to Manitou Springs.

This is a well-traveled track for us. The phrase Westward Ho! often comes to my mind whenever we head out on one of these trips. I might have picked that up from some old westerns on television in my youth, since I haven’t read Charles Kingley’s 1855 historical novel. I note that its full mock-Elizabethan title is Westward Ho! Or The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Rendered into Modern English by Charles Kingsley. Indeed.

Johnnie’s in Oklahoma City

When my parents still lived in Oklahoma City, Wendy and I would stop there on our way to Amarillo, Texas and take them out for lunch. Dad passed away in March 2022, Mom moved to Bartlesville the next month, and I said my goodbyes to our old OKC neighborhood in a series of posts earlier this year. So we didn’t venture to Windsor Hills, but we did stop for burgers at the Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler on Britton Road.

I have written about it in a post on OKC hamburger joints. They’ve heavily remodeled that location since the days long ago when my folks would periodically eat there with a group of Cities Service Gas retirees and their spouses. That made the visit less bittersweet for me.

I enjoyed my burger, with shredded cheese on it just as Johnnie Haynes used to serve it, while Wendy enjoyed one with his famous hickory sauce.

Amarillo

It rained as we drove along Interstate 40 to Amarillo. In the past, we have often stayed at the Drury Inn & Suites on the city’s western edge. But I wanted to mix things up on this trip and also hopefully avoid the feedlot smell that often wafts in from the west there.

So I’d booked a room at the downtown Embassy Suites. We parked at a garage next door and wheeled our luggage over. Heavy rainfall earlier in the month had caused major flash flooding in the city, which relies on playa lakes to contain water, but that didn’t impede us other than to prevent us from dining at Calico County, a favorite restaurant.

TripAdvisor led us to walk a few blocks to Napoli’s, an Italian restaurant. The food and service were excellent, with us enjoying bread knots, mozzarella sticks, and a mushroom pizza. I bought Wendy a rose from a fellow making the rounds of the dining rooms. She posed with it as we walked by The Heart of Amarillo, a sculpture the Amarillo National Bank built to recognize and support the local hospital’s neonatal units.

Back in our room, I admired the dark blue sky at dusk and low clouds the next morning. I noticed that the parking lot entrance to the nearby Potter County Courts Building was festooned with extensive security notices since Texas, like Oklahoma, is full of gun nuts.

We enjoyed a good hot breakfast at the hotel and checked out, heading to the botanical gardens on the city’s western edge. Fortunately, we only smelled flowers there, not feedlots. It was a beautiful stop.

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We had lunch at an Applebee’s and then drove west on the interstate. I pulled over by one of the feed lots so that Wendy could have one of her Barbie dolls pose with the cattle.

We then drove onward to Clines Corners and headed north into Santa Fe.

Photo Album | Next stop: Santa Fe