Warm Again!
When we decided to leave Kansas and head south, we had talked of going down thru Ft. Worth. Since the forecast there called for rain most of week we headed towards Amarillo. Our friend Dale said if we went that way to be sure and stop at the "little Grand Canyon... Palo Duro Canyon". We were able to stay down in one of the canyon campgrounds. Down, as about a 1 & 1/2 mile DOWN. No internet or cellphone reception, and few tv stations but gorgeous views!
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| Yes, that is our RV down there! And that's the road going down on right side of photo. |
The zoom works great on the camera.
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| We had a beautiful view from our campsite in the Sagebrush Camp area down in the canyon. |
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| The welcoming committee! |
Once we started setting up the RV Joyce had a roadrunner walk right up to her. She figured he'd been fed by previous campers. Then a couple of hours later, Joyce stepped around RV to take pics of view and could see something coming down the road into the campground. WHAT, a bobcat at 5 pm in the evening on the road?? After the initial shock, from both Joyce & the bobcat, he calmly walked into the weeds and took trail behind RV. We loved that we got to see wildlife everyday while in the canyon.
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| Roadrunner |
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| Bobcat |
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| Whitetail Deer |
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| Mule Deer |
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| Wild Turkeys |
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| Coyote |
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| Barbary Sheep |
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| Golden-fronted Woodpecker |
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| The rocks just seemed to glow in the sunset. |
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| The layers of rocks had such different colors and textures. |
There are a lot of hiking trails in the canyon. Including this one that takes you to this cavern cut in the rock.
The 26th we drove back into Amarillo as it was chilly and windy. We found the Big Texan Steakhouse to eat.
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| At the Big Texan if you take the challenge and eat a 72oz steak PLUS a shrimp cocktail, side salad, roll and the baked potato you can have it for free. NO neither of us were up to the challenge. |
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| We stopped at the tourist attraction called "The Cadillac Ranch". It's Cadillacs planted in a field. The kids have started spray painting the cars. The disappointing part is they just toss the spray cans in the field and have trashed the area, even tho there are dumpsters right at the road. Sad! |
On the 27th, we drove back up to Amarillo to tour the Quarter Horse Museum. You learned how they started the Quarter Horse Association and all the breeding that went into it. Joyce's cousin had one of the first Quarter Horse studs in Bourbon County Kansas. So we asked about getting the lineage of June Bug Bailey aka "Bugs". They sent us over to the Association Building next door, and the workers there were thrilled that we actually had his assoc. number (Joyce had called Norman to get it) and printed off all the info they had. Norman's paper had shown sire & grandsire but theirs went back another generation and they also gave us all the names of foals Bugs sired that had been registered. The woman helping us even explained how they now use DNA to verify registrations. A fun and facinating day!
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| They had several amazing bronze statues in front of museum. |
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| The names in the floor traces the foundation bloodlines of the Quarter Horse. |
Not far from Palo Duro in the town of Canyon was the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society Museum. Wow! For a small town museum it really contained lots of history of the area. Of course since you're in oil country there was a lot of information on the drilling for oil. They also had vehicles, firearms, art gallery, a small town display of what stores would look like in early 1900s, info on the formation of the Palo Duro canyon and even several dinosaur displays. There was much more and we were exhausted by the time we'd toured the 3 floors!
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| An actual drilling rig (1925) sets in the front window of museum. |
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This wall showed the progression of skulls and horns to the modern day Bison from it's prehistoric ancestors.
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We loved the Palo Duro Canyon and God showing us all its natural beauty! Now it was time to meet up with Randy's sister Connie who'd been staying in Arizona visiting family & friends. So we drove south to meet her west of Midland Texas at the Monahans Sandhills State Park.
