With the dawn the wind returned, even stronger now. I looked out the tent door at the trees and bushes whipping in the gusts and thought about the day's ride and wondered what I thought I was doing.

It was a real battle, too, for most of the thirty-some-odd-mile run south to Amarillo. The wind was mostly from ahead, but quartering enough to make control dodgy at times. Still, I'd ridden farther in worse; this would have been considered a light breeze in north Arizona.

I turned off the highway, some miles to the south, to have a look at the site of the famous Alibates quarries, where prehistoric men ran a thriving industry in the hard flint which made superior tools and weapons.

As it turned out, the site wasn't open to drop-ins; you could only visit the quarries as part of a ranger-guided tour, which you had to reserve in advance. A reasonable restriction, I had to admit; left open to the public, the place would have been picked over by swarms of tourists, ruining its scientific value. Well, I didn't really have time to look around anyway. I headed back to the highway, where the wind was waiting for me.

Amarillo is a great sprawling town, most of it butt-ugly and rather seedy; it must surely be the cheap-motel capital of the world. I spotted the one Phyllis and I stayed at back in the eighties, but felt no impulse to take a room; nostalgic sentiment does have its limits. Out to the west of town, off yet another frontage road, there was a world-famous landmark:

The Cadillac Ranch has got to be one of the dumbest of all human monuments. Not that there's anything wrong with dumb, per se; and it was surely a good joke when it was first put up. But the gag has worn very thin over the years; and now the most bizarre sight is not the Cadillacs themselves, but the numbers of grown people who stop and walk out across a sun-baked field to stare at a bunch of half-buried old cars.

South of Amarillo, though, is another sight that isn't dumb at all: Palo Duro Canyon, possibly the most spectacular sight in Texas.

They tell you it's the second biggest canyon in the US, after the Grand of course. That's a bit misleading, because it's not at all like a smaller edition of the Grand Canyon, being proportioned very differently: a very respectable width and length (it stretches over a hundred miles; the park only takes in a small portion) but nothing at all like the depth. But still there's no denying it's a hell of a sight.

Oddly, I'd never been here before, even though I'd passed quite close by on several occasions, and a couple of times considered stopping for a look. But I was always on my way somewhere else, or something....

Another major difference from the canyons of Arizona: an excellent (if very squirmy) paved road leading down to the bottom. I switched off the engine and coasted down for most of the way; with gas prices as they were, I wasn't passing up a chance like that.

Once down in the canyon, though, the effect is not what you might expect; because of the great width of the floor, it doesn't really feel like being down in a canyon, so much as just a valley surrounded by steep hills.

This was a historic place, too; old Charles Goodnight had a place down in the canyon, and the Comanches and Kiowas had long used it for a base, finally fighting a ferocious and decisive battle with MacKenzie's hard-riding troopers in 1874. A tough and expert soldier, MacKenzie committed no massacres - in fact actual casualties were remarkably light on both sides - but instead destroyed the Indians' supplies and horses, leaving them with no recourse in the face of a High Plains winter but to return to the reservation. Still a hell of a thing, but a far more humane and intelligent approach than was usual in the Indian wars, and a profound contrast with the inept butcheries of George Custer.

I rode around for several hours, admiring the sights. I had thought about spending the night in the canyon, but a look at the tiny campgrounds killed that idea: no water, no nothing, and they wanted fourteen bucks a night. Shit, I could get a cheap motel room in Amarillo for not much more than that...I said the hell with it and decided to go back up north again.

And late that afternoon I was making camp again at the same site from the night before, up on the caprock. By now the wind wasn't nearly as bad and the forecast on the little radio promised better conditions for the morning.

The next day was a long one, not so windy but very hot. I made pretty good time heading back to Oklahoma, though after I crossed the line I kept forgetting the lower speed limit; a wonder I didn't get ticketed, but it was Saturday afternoon and I didn't see any cops at all except for one who gave me the bad eye in a little Okie town but didn't bother me.

Near Minco a bunch of characters on bikes pulled out onto the highway ahead of me, in a tight formation that suggested they did this a lot. They wore black T-shirts with some sort of emblem or logo, though I couldn't make it out; and they seemed to be riding mostly Harleys, with pointlessly loud aftermarket pipes. The noise, coming up behind them, was irritating as hell, especially as tired as I was; and so as soon as we were all out on an open stretch of road, with no cops or other vehicles in sight, I gave them a little demonstration of what a V45 Magna will do. I think it pissed them off; I hope so anyway.

Back again at Lake Tumblebug, tired from the long hot ride, I did a sloppy job of stowing my gear that evening; and so, of course, that night it rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock. I rigged a line and hung the soggier items out to dry, and rode into town to see Phyllis again.