High Plains Drifting
These leisurely drives explore a part of Texas where the vistas are spectacular, the history is rich, and the natives will want you to sit and talk a spell. Best of all, there’s elbow room to spare.
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Turkey is the hometown of Bob Wills, the fiddler who invented western swing music, and it celebrates his legacy every year on the last weekend in April. The town, bouncing back from a steady loss of population, has gussied up its main street with metal art silhouettes of cowboys, windmills, and the like and a revolving fiddle statue dedicated to Wills. The best place to hear some fiddling is in the back of the Peanut Patch restaurant (Second and Main, 806-423-1051). Owners Silvia and Allan Boeshart, expatriates from Switzerland and Ohio, respectively, are swing fanatics. Silvia’s $12.50 prix fixe dinners are some of the finest cooking found along the Caprock, relying on fresh vegetables and fruits, and herbs snipped from her garden. When I visited, she had prepared beef consommé, hearty roast beef smothered in mushrooms, new potatoes, field greens, Eyes of Texas salad (black-eyed peas and salmon), yucca blossoms with tomatoes and bell peppers (a variation of a Comanche delicacy), and homemade strawberry ice cream. Since Turkey is dry, you’re advised to bring your own wine.
Bunk at the Hotel Turkey (Third and Alexander, 806-423-1151, 800-657-7110), a restored fifteen-room hotel that was built in 1927 and is operated by Gary and Suzie Johnson; a room for two with breakfast starts at $75. Or continue north on Texas Highway 70 for 44 miles to Clarendon and dude it up seriously at Frank and Terri Hommel’s Bar H Ranch (800-627-9871, 806-874-2634), a working cattle operation nestled in a broad valley three miles west of town on FM 3257. The Bar H offers meals, overnight accommodations, and extended stays; a double room is $65, including meals and activities (Germans, it seems, are particularly keen on paying for the privilege of helping out the cowboys with their daily chores during roundups and cattle drives four times a year). Or you can continue on from Turkey to Amarillo via Texas Highways 86 west and 207 north through Quitaque; the Quitaque Quail Lodge (806-455-1261), a bed and breakfast in a rambling ranch house on 38 acres three miles west of town, is a comfy overnight option (double rooms are $75—$95). Head up the Cap on Texas Highway 86 to Silverton, then north on Texas Highway 207 to the Mackenzie Reservoir, through Tule Canyon (where in 1874 Colonel Ranald Mackenzie destroyed more than a thousand horses belonging to Indians after the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon) and the Palo Duro Canyon (save a few minutes to view it from the south rim roadside picnic area), to Claude, where you pick up U.S. 287 to Amarillo, a 108-mile trip from Turkey.
While in Lubbock…Check out the Ranching Heritage Center (3121 Fourth Street, 806-742-2482) near the Texas Tech campus, with a collection of real ranch buildings, including a primitive dugout dwelling and a barn from the famous 6666 Ranch, and exhibits devoted to various aspects of ranching and the lot of the pioneer woman. Next door, the Museum of Texas Tech (806-742-2490), which has an extensive collection of spurs and several pieces by sculptor Glenna Goodacre, is currently featuring a traveling exhibit about the Jazz Age in Paris.
Lubbock Lake Landmark State Historical Park (2401 Landmark Lane, by Loop 289, 806-765-0737) is the site of the oldest culture unearthed on the South Plains, the pre-Clovis people, dating back 12,000 years; digs are ongoing through August 15. The grounds also include a one-mile archaeological trail and a four-mile nature trail.
The city’s newest museum is the American Windpower Center (1501 Canyon Lake Drive, 806-747-8734), an indoor-outdoor collection of windmills. The center was inspired by the work of Texas Tech home economics professor Billie Wolfe, who began cataloging the fast-disappearing icons of the plains before her death, in 1997. There are currently fifty windmills inside and fourteen taking the breezes outside, including a rare double windmill.
Prairie Dog Town in nearby MacKenzie Park (Fourth Street and Interstate 27, 806-775-2687) is one of the country’s few remaining colonies of these cute rodents.
It’s not exactly the Napa Valley, but on an improvised tour of three area wineries you can learn about the state of the state’s grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon dominates, Merlot is coming on strong, and Shiraz is in the works), then sample the products. A designated driver is suggested. Llano Estacado (806-745-2258) and Caprock Winery (806-863-2704), are within five minutes of each other a few miles south of the city off U.S. 87. The smaller Pheasant Ridge (806-746-6033) is fifteen miles north of town and east of New Deal (take I-27). The season’s grape harvest starts in mid-August.
September 3 marks the official opening of the Buddy Holly Center (Nineteenth and Avenue G, 806-767-2686), a cultural facility in the old Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway Depot. The classic Spanish-mission-revival edifice also houses a Texas musicians hall of fame and the Buddy Holly Collection, the city’s first permanent exhibit dedicated to its most famous native son. The depot anchors Lubbock’s nightlife district, which includes the Cactus Theater (1812 Buddy Holly Avenue, 806-762-3233), one block from the Holly Center, where impresario Don Caldwell stages theater productions. West Texas Music, the Play—which provides an overview of the genre from Buddy Holly to Waylong Jennings to the Dixie Chicks—runs from July 9 through 31.
Buffalo Springs Lake (806-747-3353), a natural spring-fed lake five miles southeast of Lubbock on FM 835, offers two swimming beaches, water slides, boating, hiking and biking trails, camping areas, and RV hookups.
North Toward Kansas
Childress to Perryton to Amarillo: a three-hundred-mile semicircle that can be driven in one, two, or three days, depending on what kind of hurry you’re in.
The Canadian River breaks on the east side of the Panhandle offer some of the most pleasant scenery in the entire state. The land really opens up into real Giant country. The mesquite, part and parcel of the South Plains, has faded away here, yielding to lush grasses on undulating slopes that resemble the foothills of the Rockies, and the landmarks become fewer and farther between, building up to the drama that is the Canadian River Valley. The fall foliage in the hollows and valleys along this route is famous for its show of colors. The route is one that Tom Copeland, the diector of the Texas Film Commission, recommends to crews for shots of unsullied ranchland.
Starting at Childress, turn north on U.S. 83 and go through Shamrock (55 miles) and Wheeler (another 16 miles). Twenty miles north of Wheeler on U.S. 83 is the turnoff to the Buffalo Wallow battleground monument, another significant site of the Red River War, near where the Kiowa and the Comanche held a wagon train under siege. Head east on FM 277 for 7 miles, turning right (south) onto a dirt road for another mile to the marker.
Back on U.S. 83, go 7 miles north, then turn east on Texas Highway 33 for a picturesque 35-mile meander across the Oklahoma line to the main 30,000-acre section of the Black Kettle National Grasslands. This is where, in November 1868, the Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Colonel George Armstrong Custer, fought the Battle of Washita against Cheyenne chief Black Kettle. In a dawn raid Custer wiped out a Cheyenne village and succeeded in killing Chief Black Kettle. This victory stopped Cheyenne hostilities and enhanced Custer's career, which endedin 1876 at Little Big Horn, in South Dakota.
Backtrack on Highway 33 and resume going north on U.S. 83, which broadens into a four-lane route that drops into the Canadian River Valley. Be on the lookout for Aud, the fifty-foot-long dinosaur sculpture on a rise on the east side of the road three miles south of the town of Canadian. Never has a plant-eating brontosaurus appeared so fierce.
Canadian, the Panhandle’s river town, comes as close to small town perfection as it gets in these parts. Most of the brick storefronts on the four-block Main Street are occupied, the restored Palace Theatre (210 Main, 806-323-5133) shows movies, the River Valley Pioneer Museum (118 N. Second Street, 806-323-6548) has a new exhibit on the Buffalo Wallow fight, the courthouse is immaculately landscaped, and the nearby homes suggest prosperity without bragging about it. Canadian has two motels and three B&B’s, including the Emerald House (103 N. Sixth Street, 806-323-5827), with rooms starting at $45, and the Thicket (seven miles northeast of town on FM 2266, 806-323-8118), whose rooms start at $53.
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