Here we go again and again travel blog

The Lighthouse

Looking down from the rim

The visitors center is on the right

We're going down there

 

 

We're down

This water get's over five feet at times

Desert plantlife

 

Wonder who lived here?

How did they get here?

View from a campsite we stopped at

Couldn't get my camera ready in time

 

We saw lots of bikers going up here

Love the colors

Cute huh?

Looks like a chimney to me

You could almost see a face at the top

The trees are just starting to bud

Nice

 

Back at the visitors center

Part of the herd still in the Park

The Story


When we left this morning at 9:30 we had every intention of going to the Palo Duro Canyon State Park but it was so cold and windy and clouds filled the skies. To let you in on how bad it has been, the winds that I complained about were at 70 miles per hour and the temps topped at 60. Today wasn’t much better at first with the temps down to 40 and still sporting a wind so we did some needed shopping and while we were at the mall we say the sun shining through. Oh ya. Time to head out. I plugged the State Park in my GPS and we drove for about 15 miles before we found out that I had punched the wrong park in. OOPS…Clumsy finger… Well of course we were going in the opposite direction than we wanted to be so we retraced our route and finally went south which was the right direction… We drove through some of the most dissolute areas of Texas on the flattest ground we have traveled in a long time when all of a sudden the ground opened up all around us and we found ourselves on the rim of one of the most beautiful canyons we have seen. I guess the closest I can compare it to is Canyon lands NP in Southern Utah….. We soon came to the entrance gate to the State Park and the darling girl thought we were too young for the senior discount.. Can you believe that? And to think she wasn’t even looking for a tip. Palo Duro Canyon is 120 miles long and 800 ft. deep. The Red River carved this canyon way way back. It is rich in history with several Native American tribes in the area. In 1874 the Red River war moved the natives to Oklahoma and in 1876 Charles Goodnight entered the canyon and opened the JA Ranch, which supported over 100,000 cattle. Today we saw cattle that are still there but now owned by the State Parks of Texas; Texas Longhorn's, of course?   Once we drove down to the bottom of the canyon we found some of the nicest campgrounds. We would have given anything to be next door to the people we met from Minnesota that were just setting up camp. What a beautiful site they had and this campground had both water and electric with a dump station just outside. It was a great campground but I'm afraid we might have had a little trouble with a coach as long as ours.   Not so much the curves but maybe bottoming out at some of the washes.    There are many trails in this park and the one everyone wants to go to is the trail to the “Lighthouse”. You will find this awesome landmark on all tourist books for Amarillo but the hike is 6 miles round trip. Had we been able to start out this morning like we planned, we would have hiked it but by the time we got there it was too late in the day for a six mile hike. I did get some great pictures though from our point. Hope you enjoy them. If time and weather is with us, we will try to go back and take that hike. Later………

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