Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido and we are in the Lake
Meredith National Recreation Area northeast of Amarillo, Texas. This is some beautiful
free lakeside camping! We're going to bring you along this week, so stay tuned.
Last week we shared the dry, windswept plains of the Texas Panhandle surrounding Amarillo
that nevertheless hold a few hidden gems, like Palo Duro Canyon where we spent the past week.
Northeast of Amarillo lies another secret: Lake Meredith, a hidden oasis where wildlife and people
find relief from the dry grasslands above. Through this plain, the Canadian River has cut dramatic
200-foot canyons where the river has been impounded by the Sanford Dam to create 10,000-acre
Lake Meredith, the largest body of water for 200 miles in any direction. The Lake Meredith National
Recreation Area, maintained by the National Park Service lines much of the lakeshore.
There are a number of campgrounds surrounding Lake Meredith within the National Recreation Area,
and all are free of charge. We've opted for one of the dry campsites at Sanford-Yake Campground
near the town of Fritch, high on a bluff above the shoreline.
There are a number of campsites at Sanford-Yake that include electrical and water hookups,
but those must be reserved in advance by calling the bait shop at the boat ramp. All
other campsites within the Lake Meredith National Recreation Area are first come, first served.
Dispersed camping is permitted anywhere within the National Recreation Area, and one popular spot to
do so is on the beach at Cedar Canyon, immediately adjacent to the Sanford-Yake Campground.
With the proximity of the lake to our campsite, it would be a crime to not
pull our kayak off the roof of the truck for one final paddle for the 2021 season.
On the south side of the lake is the Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument. For thousands
of years, people came to the red bluffs above the Canadian River for flint, vital to their
existence. The rainbow-hued Alibates flint has been found by archaeologists throughout the Great
Plains and beyond. Indians of the Ice Age Clovis culture used Alibates flint for spear points to
hunt the Columbian mammoth before the Great Lakes were even formed. Many of the quarries found here
were exploited by the Antelope Creek people of the Panhandle culture between 1200 and 1450 AD.
Today, this area is protected by the U.S. National Park Service.
We stopped by the National Monument's Visitor Center, but the quarries can only be viewed by
ranger-led guided tours, which must be reserved in advance. So we had to instead satisfy ourselves
with some off-roading on the seldom-used trails within and surrounding the National Monument.
Aside from the lake recreation itself, there's little to see and do in the area surrounding Lake
Meredith. The nearest town, Fritch, is a rather sad little place that has clearly seen better
days. RV travelers can find anything they need including a Walmart in the larger community of
Borger, about a 20-minute drive to the east. We spent a relaxing three nights at Lake Meredith,
and frankly this might have been one of the shortest episodes of Grand Adventure
if we didn't include two ghost towns along the Historic Route 66
beside the present-day I-40, en route to the location of next week's episode.
Formerly named Rock Island, Glenrio straddles the Texas/New Mexico border.
The community was founded in 1903 as a siding on the Rock Island Railroad. Motorists first
arrived on the dusty Ozark Trail in 1917, but by the 1930s it became the paved U.S. Route 66
and Glenrio residents developed several filling stations, a restaurant, and a motel. At one point,
all fuel was dispensed on the Texas side due to New Mexico's higher gasoline taxes.
The State Line Bar and motel were built in New Mexico because Deaf Smith County, Texas,
was dry at the time. Portions of the 1940 film The Grapes of Wrath were filmed here. Glenrio went in
to decline beginning in 1975 when Interstate 40 bypassed the town, and today it's uninhabited.
Another 85 miles west of Glenrio is the much larger ghost town of Cuervo, in New Mexico between
Tucumcari and Santa Rosa. Nearly all of the structures in the community are now abandoned and
very deteriorated. The town began in 1901 when the Rock Island railroad came thorough, and started
to grow when the surrounding land was opened to cattle ranching in 1910 when the railroad siding
was abandoned. Then Route 66 came along, and the town's population peaked in the 1940s at over 300
to support local businesses including gas stations and stores to cater to travelers. I-40 split the
town in two in the late 1960s, and dealt Cuervo a fatal wound as cars whizzed past. Cuervo still
had a post office until 2011, and today there are two homes in the community that appear
updated and inhabited, along with one auto repair business on the north side of the Interstate,
but for all intents and purposes Cuervo is now a ghost town. The community's long-abandoned school
building and century-old Catholic Church appear to be undergoing some degree of restoration.
So we truly hope that you've enjoyed visiting Lake Meredith with us! If you liked this episode
please be sure to give us a big "thumbs up" down below! And while you're down below you're going to
find the comments section where we love to hear from you after each episode of Grand Adventure.
Now we air new RV adventure travel videos each and every Wednesday evening, so if you're not
yet a Grand Adventurer this is the perfect time to go smash that little red "subscribe" button
right down there in the lower right-hand corner of your screen,
and ring that notification bell to be sure that you never miss a Grand Adventure.
Now we'd be honored if you shared the channel with your friends, family, and on social media.
So until next week please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.