Palo Duro/Amarillo

September 25-28, 2018

After successfully navigating our way out of Red Rock Canyon State Park we set our sights on Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the "Grand Canyon of Texas". After 240+ miles we arrived at the top of the canyon. The campgrounds are at the bottom of the canyon, the road down to the bottom has a two mile 10% grade but the road is plenty wide enough as long as folks stay in their lane. Our site was in the Juniper Loop with water and electric $25/night, we have the Texas Park Pass to cover daily entry fees into the Texas State Parks. There is no Verizon signal though reports have it you can get ATT, no trouble getting a satellite signal and there were a bunch of over the air channels. 

Site 104

As has become the norm when we are near bigger cities, head into to the town to do the tourist thing, take in a brewery and maybe have a meal somewhere. So what did we do on our day in Amarillo, a town that has a rich Route 66 history that we just had to see a few of the sites.

Our first stop was Cadillac Ranch where 10 Cadillac’s are buried nose first, a place where you can spray paint Cadillacs and not get in trouble.

After doing our artwork for the day we headed to the Jack Sisemore RV Museum for the cultural part of the day.  Free admission and a wonderful personal collection of old RV’s and camping stuff with some motorcycles and auto memorabilia thrown in. Not sure I’d want to full time in some of those old RV’s, sure is interesting to see how far we’ve come. The museum is on the site of the Jack Sisemore dealer which was recently taken over by Camping World, so far nothing said Camping World.

A stop at the Long Wooden Spoon Brewery for the boys to try some local brew. Curt made a stop afterwards at a local beer store to get some brew they made, Dave didn’t feel compelled to add any to the collection at home. What has been different about breweries in OK and TX is they haven’t been serving food at the breweries, I know it’s local/state regulations and some bring in food trucks just different and for us non beer drinkers it doesn’t leave much. 

If you’re doing the tourist thing in Amarillo you must stop at the Big Texan for a meal, so of course we did. This is our third visit and all have been good, much better than some similar places we’ve been to.

Over the course of a few days we hiked a few of the trails on the canyon floor, next time we come here I want to do some of the other hikes. Some hiking, geochaching and wildlife made for a fun few days.

Scenery along the canyon floor hikes.

There was some geocaching or figuring out where the heck we were.  We did end up with a few geocaches. 

Of course there is always the wildlife.

While there we enjoyed the dark skies and almost full moon.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time but like so many of the parks we’ve been to this trip the flies have been terrible. We enjoyed some great meals and fun evenings playing cards with Curt and Glenda, hard to believe our trip is now winding down.  

Until next time…