We have decided to spend the weekend in Amarillo so we went to the downtown area to see whatever. The American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum was our first stop.
The building was quite impressive. The Grand Hall is dedicated to all the inductees of the Hall of Fame and is quite grand.
There are several galleries with exhibits. We found the gallery that had write-ups about “remudas”, groups of working horses bred by ranches specifically to work with cattle”, to be very interesting. Large ranches with thousands of acres and hundreds to thousands of head of cattle continue to use cowboys for rounding up cattle in the dense thick brush as they always have done. Each cowboy is given a supply of horses (6-8, depending on what each ranch decides on) that he uses for his ranch work. A theater showing a short 10 minute movie tells about the origins of the quarter horse. Other galleries showcased champion horses, hall of fame inductees and equipment and tack used with the horses.
Our next stop was at the Amarillo Art Museum which had a nice display of international art as well as some local. We drove around the downtown area and was surprised how died it was. We then drove to an area along the major highway with restaurants, Wal-mart and such and found that area bustling. We had some sprinkles of rain this morning and now at 6pm the sun is shining and it has gotten windy with temperatures reaching upper 60’s today.
