Palo Duro Canyon

In the midst of the flattest land in the US, just 35 miles south of Amarillo, lies "the most beautiful state park in America", Palo Duro Canyon, a baby Grand Canyon.

We turned south out of the rv park, taking a farm road that soon turned to hard packed gravel. So much for the car wash the other day.

After connecting with I-25, heading south towards Lubbock, we soon turned off near Canyon, Texas, and arrived at the State Park.

Our first glimpse of the canyon was from the road just past the entrance station. After the extraordinary level, flat terrain all around us, it was almost a shock to see this great canyon!

The Visitors Center was built in 1937 by the CCC. Paid a dollar a day, CCC workmen said that all they needed to do was work a million days to become a millionaire! A young man named Jim arrived in 1938 to work on the park. After a 5-day week working and a Saturday morning of cleaning camp and doing laundry, he joined his buddies for a Saturday night dance at the recently completed Visitors Center building. During that evening he spied a young lady across the room who seemed very shy, so he introduced himself and asked her to dance. After an evenings conversation, he told his friends that he had met his future wife! They were soon married in front of one of the picture windows at the Visitors Center. Rene and Jim were married 62 years and had a large family. She returned to that same window after Jim's death to honor that young man who asked her to dance.

From the hill above the VC, we got our first complete view of this beautiful canyon.

We followed Park Road 5 in a large loop through part of the park. If you look at a topo map, you'll see that the canyon widens out as it goes south, but at this point it is fairly narrow, and is breathtaking.

At every turn, new sights awaited us.

This is the same bluff we saw as we first entered the park.

Miles of trails crisscross the park, and there is a huge mountain bike trail system. A mountain bike competition was gearing up today around this distant peak.

As we climbed out of the canyon, we had to stop and get a photo of some of Texas' famous Bluebonnets.

And then we were back in reality....Texas style. Can you imagine what the sky must look like out here at night?

Into the town of Canyon, where WTAMU has its campus. ? Western Texas Agriculture and Mechanical University. I like the acronym better. We had a sandwich at Fat Boys BBQ, ate only 1/2 of it at a local park so Sasha could play, and headed home. BTW, she enjoyed walking the trails and chasing bugs! We spied a residential development as we neared Amarillo that intrigued us. No pics, but it consisted of six or eight zero-lot line homes in a group, with garages in the rear and an alley serving homes on both sides. All single floor homes, with minimal front yards and a compact floorplan, we wished that this type of development could occur in our home area. These would be perfect for seniors down-sizing, or in our case, up-sizing from the motorhome!