This sure isn’t Texas!

Can you guess where we are?

A place where there is snow on the mountains:

Rivers so clear you can see the trout swimming on the bottom:

Cool, crisp, pine scented, fresh air.

A place where you can still make snowballs on April 21st.

Beautiful Birds:

Stellar's Jay

Mountain Bluebird

Western Bluebird

Say's Phoebe

 Have you figured it out?

We’re in beautiful Colorado.

Lighthouse Hike (Part 2)

It was getting warmer as we hiked back from the Lighthouse, and the lizards and butterflies were enjoying the sunshine. Our first find was a Texas Horned Lizard sunning itself on the trail. "Horny Toads" were pretty common when we were kids, but they are now listed as threatened in the state. Loss of habitat and the accidental introduction of Red Imported Fire Ants have caused real problems for these guys.






We came across a real show-stopper a bit further down the trail. This amazing Collared Lizard, (aka Common Collared Lizard) was sunning itself on a sandy spot alongside the trail. This was a nice male, and the males are said to be highly territorial. Our attention didn't seem to bother him at all, and he remained on his spot as we hiked on.







As the weather warmed, we did see a few butterflies, including this Dainty Sulphur and Checkered White.

All-in-all, a great morning's hike!

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!