Palo Duro Canyon

Hi all,
  It feels good to be back on the road. While we are definitely spending more, we know it will balance out later. We have started to find some warmer weather, seems like we have been wearing pants way to much.
  On Sunday we took off for Palo Duro Canyon Sate Park. It is located about 20 mi. south of Amarillo. Palo Duro Canyon is the Grand Canyon of Texas. It is the second largest canyon in the US. It measures 120 miles long and 800 feet deep. There are horse trails, mountain biking, and good hiking throughout the park.

  We wanted to tour the park and get in a short hike, but you know how that goes. We set off on the Lighthouse trail, a little over 6 mi. round trip. We thought as we hadn't been hiking much lately we just walk until we thought we had enough. Of course the monuments of the Lighthouse Peak and nearby Castle Peak beckoned us on.

  It also was not alot of elevation so we carried on. At the very end it was a pretty tough scramble up to the top and I felt I needed to save some energy for the return trip. That and as we didn't set out to do a big hike we only carried our water battles and one spare bottle. Bad planning on our part- we got very nice water backpacks left in the RV. Hiking in the canyon gets very warm, even though the general temp was about 70 it was over 80 on the canyon trail. I did encourage Wendy to go ahead and complete the climb. After a rest she went for it. The climb up is obscured by trees so you don't know exactly what you're getting into. Wendy reported that you did have to scramble a bit up and she scooted down on her hiney some while coming down. She got the pics for me and we headed back. The trail was very well marked almost every tenth of a mile. It was a great hike, we just hope to get out doing more of this.

View from Lighthouse Peak

Spotted a coyote watching us

   On the drive to the park on FM1151 we came across these combines half buried, we did a double take and spun around to get pics. We counted 14 of them and the sign Combine City. We had seen no mention of in travel brochures or the visitor center.

You never know what you'll see!

  So on Monday we continued on to New Mexico. We decided to avoid Albuquerque and drive some blue roads (off freeway). The drive wasn't to special but we did go from flat to some nice hills with mountains in far view. On Tuesday we continued southbound and Wendy got all excited seeing some trees that were actually in fall color. It was a nice drive and we arrived in Deming New Mexico. We are in Dream Catcher RV a Escapee park. We will stay here a week and check out some nearby state parks.