A Lighthouse in the Texas Panhandle ??

One of the "classic" Texas hikes is to the Lighthouse formation here in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We've read about this hike and seen pictures for 30 years, but have never had the opportunity to do it ourselves. So today was the day! The weather here is perfect for hiking, with lows in the 40's and highs in the upper 60's.

Palo Duro Canyon was formed by the erosion of shale and sandstone, and we enjoyed seeing the many layers that had been exposed.



During the erosion process, occasional pillars of rock (called hoodoo's) are left behind.



At about the 1.8 mile mark, we got our first look at the Lighthouse formation.

At the 2.2 mile mark there was a nice viewpoint.

We went the full 3 miles, and with a final (steep) effort we found ourselves up on the mesa next to the Lighthouse!





We walked around on top a bit, and enjoyed a break with a great view of the "back" of the Lighthouse.



It was a great hike, but we still had 3 miles to get back to the truck. Check our next post for some of the critters we enjoyed on the walk down!

Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas

We’ll be spending about six days here at Palo Duro Canyon State Park.


Our site

Palo Duro Canyon State Park officially opened on July 4, 1934. The canyon is 120 miles long and 800 feet deep.

The drive from the park entry to the campground is pretty steep. Mark told me it is one mile at a 10% grade. The road goes across five low water crossings. There had been some rain here the day before we arrived and one of the crossings still had some water on it.



Palo Duro is Spanish for hard wood in reference to the Rocky Mountain juniper trees found in the canyon.

We’re camped at the bottom of the canyon looking out at the canyon walls.

This is the scene out our, very dirty, back window:



This photo was also taken out the back window:



This is the view from the front:



This is the first time we've camped at Palo Duro Canyon. It's a beautiful Park. I'll have many more pictures so keep checking.


Sunset over the canyon.

On the Road

We busted two out of three of our traveling rules today.
Since our retirement we try to use the 2-2-2 rule when traveling that a lot of full time RV'ers use:

1. Drive 200 miles or less.
2. Be off the road by 2:00 p.m.
3. Stay at least 2 nights in the campground.

We left Abilene State Park a couple of hours later than we had planned because of the rainy weather. So, that put us into our destination campground about 4:00 p.m. And, it was a little bit farther than 200 miles.

It turned out to be a long day. We had a hard headwind that Mark fought the whole way.

These shots were taken through the windshield so there are a few bug guts but everything else is good old Texas dust!





We have made it to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. It is the second largest canyon in the United States. My new 'header' photo is a picture of the canyon.

We'll be here all week so stay tuned for more photos and info to come!

Headin' North

We've left Central Texas and are heading for our summer "job" in Colorado. We will take a couple of weeks to make our way north and plan to visit a few new parks on the way. We chose Abilene State for our first stop. This area of West Texas can be pretty stark so we were pleasantly surprised to find a nicely shaded campground.

There are several Civilian Conservation Corp structures here in the park, including the pool house and viewing tower.

Our next stop will be Palo Duro State Park, also known as "The Grand Canyon of Texas".

Stay tuned...

Cactus Flowers

While we were at Laguna Atascosa, we saw plenty of cactus. Just before we left, the Prickly Pear came into bloom and surprised us with their variety of colors. Everywhere else we've seen Prickly Pear bloom yellow, but in Cameron County, Texas, they show a range of colors from yellow to red to purple. In fact, folks have started transplanting the Cameron County cactus to get these colors elsewhere!

Our time is up!

It’s hard to believe our three months are already finished here at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

We have had a wonderful time and hope to get back here next year. We really liked our job duties and working with the biologist. All the staff have been very nice.

Even though we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the other volunteers, we enjoyed meeting everyone.

During our three months we donated 696 hours of our time. Tried out 21 new restaurants. Saw 3 life birds, Nilgai Antelope, and an ocelot.

Here are a few more favorite photos:


Roseatte Spoonbill


Black-necked Stilt


South Padre Island Beach


Mark on the jetty


Brown Pelican


Green Jay

This little Screech Owl roosts in the left side drain pipe over the visitor center:








Wild Turkey


Long-billed Curlew


Sunrise over the Laguna Madre

We’ll be home for a week or so then start heading to Colorado. We’ll have a few stops along the way to our next volunteer assignment which starts May 1.

Keep reading as we travel to Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge.

Lives of Birds:

We have been going out to the South Padre Island Birding Center every Saturday morning and have enjoyed watching the birds going about their lives. While it is fun to simply see and identify birds, we find it interesting to observe them feeding, preening, competing for territories, etc.

It is the time for male birds to establish their territories, and we observed these female (thanks Judy for the correction on gender!) Belted Kingfishers doing aerial battle over the birding center. They were waaaay up in the sky so these images aren't as clear as I would like. But some of the postures these guys achieved were amazing.
---Mark