Our View From The Road

I’m up at 6:45am to turn on the propane and then the furnace. This means going outside at 6C in my shorts. Brrr. However, the warmth from the furnace feels nice and by 7:30am the inside of the van is a toasty 18C. Time to make some coffee.

We move from the Wild Horse campground to the regular campground today but first it’s time for eggs and sausage cooked on the griddle. We figure this will be the last griddle cooked meal for this trip so a little extra time is spent cleaning after we’ve eaten.

We pack most items into the passenger area of the van as the move to the new campground is only a few kilometers. Once ready, we back out of our site and leave the campground turning away from our destination as we want to briefly explore the deeper areas of the park. Some of the road is very steep and not accessible to those with trailers. The tenting campgrounds look nice but remote; however, they have fantastic views of the red canyon walls.

We see a few Bison grazing near the road and taking a drink in a lake.

We visit the park office to get our tag for the new campsite but we can’t occupy it until 12:00pm. Off to the showers! Ahhhh, hot water. This is nice. We both are less smelly as we arrive at our new campsite.

We’ll only be here for the day and overnight, but we both agree that this is the nicest state park campsite we’ve had all trip.

We have lunch and go for a walk along the canyon edge and take a few photos. We see a herd of Bison not far away, but watch them to ensure they’re not looking our way and potentially blocking our return to the van. No problems, they’re busy grazing and are far enough say that we pass without them paying us any heed.

Sitting under the shade structure writing this and I just got blasted by a dust devil that blew right through our site. Might need to clean the van out again as the door is open!

We spend the remainder of the afternoon planning the last few days of our trip and chatting with friends and family.

A warm night last night and neither of us had a good sleep initially. Then the temperature dropped and we both slept really well into the early morning. Uncharacteristically we didn’t wake until around 7:30am.

I decided to go for a walk along the Wild Horse trail and explore the lower portion of the canyon. Initially the trail starts at the top of the canyon wall with some lovely views across and along the canyon. It then descends down into the canyon where it wanders along the bottom crossing a dry riverbed several times.

It was while descending into one of these crossings I turned and saw a small herd of Bison. They were about 100m from me but the bull saw me and turned to look at me. I stood still and took a few photos before quietly retreating back along the trail I had walked.

Returning back to the campsite I passed Barb who was going on her own exploration. She found some interesting plants to take pictures of.

We cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast and settled in for a quiet day of reading and relaxation. I finished the book that I had picked up in Albuquerque and Barb finished what was her 6th book of this trip.

We watched as others left the park and new neighbors replaced them. We even witnessed a couple riding horses towards the canyon as they passed through the campground.

The winds returned around dinner time and we were forced to eat in the van to avoid having Texan dust added to our meal as a seasoning. It sure is windy in these parts.

Last night and tonight we are staying in the Wild Horse campground of the park. It is an area designated for folks who camp with their horses as each site has a corral for Horses and is fenced from having the Bison wandering through the sites (evidently Horses and Bison do not get along). We chose to stay in this area because there was no available sites in the regular campground. Tomorrow we move to the regular campground within the park where the sites have electrical connections as well as water. There are also showers which we are very much looking forward to using.

That’s it for today, check back tomorrow to see what we get up to.

The winds died down overnight and it was calm by the time we woke. Today we will stop at the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We had originally wanted to camp there but they had no sites and thus we will become day visitors instead.

We’re leaving the winery at about 9:30am and the state park is only a 20 minute drive. There’s a small line up of cars entering the park so it only takes a few minutes and we’re in.

Our first stop is an overlook that provides a picturesque vista of the canyon. We also visit the gift shop and interpretive center to learn a little of how the canyons in this part of Texas were formed.

Access into the canyon is down a steep 10% grade with several switchbacks. At the bottom the main park road encircles the canyon bottom and is several miles in length.

It is hot. 31C hot. I’ve heard people say “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat”. OK, but hot is still hot so sunscreen, hats and bottles of water are a must as we set out to do a little walking on some of the trails.

We choose an easy trail that is near the river and only about 1 mile in length. We took off down another trail by accident and when done had walked over 2 miles with little to no shade. Oops.

For lunch we parked the van in one of the many picnic spots that have shelters over the tables to provide shade. Lunch was yummy and a nice reward for completing the hike.

Leaving the canyon we head southeast towards our next camping spot at Caprock Canyon State Park in Quitaque (pronounced Kitty-quay). On the way from Canyon to Quitaque the landscape changed from flat (really flat) agricultural grasslands to less flat central Texas plains where there are trees and things seem to be much greener than up on the grasslands above the canyons.

We are staying at Caprock for 3 nights and plan on hiking some of the trails and relaxing. This is our last ‘destination’ for this trip. On Monday we begin our eastward drive toward Ontario. I will blog along the way, but before then come back and see what we get up to here at Caprock.