Monday, June 08, 2009

Palo Duro Canyon

We went to Texas for the weekend. Left our motorhome behind at Ute Lake and tented in Palo Duro state park below Amarillo. The canyon is second in size to the Grand Canyon.
It was very pretty, very buggy and very hot (95-105) but we still had a good time. Janet and Brad shared out campsite .

The first night we went to see "Texas". It is a musical in it's 40 something year. We were there for opening night of this season. It is preformed in an outdoor amphitheater with the canyon walls as the backdrop. It opens with a horseman on the ridge way on top carrying the Texas flag. The actors, dancers etc preform on a huge stage at the foot of the audience and the side cliff's open up to other parts of the set.

Between the stage and the real canyon walls are trees, bushes and horseman, stage coaches etc go thru that area as part of the drama. The story is about the settling of the Panhandle. Awesome lighting was displayed on the canyon walls.

The most awesome part was when a thunder storm was staged with thunder and lightening against the canyon walls and a REAL thunderstorm was happening over the canyon. Hard to tell what was real and what was staged at times.

The show ended with a fireworks display.

The second day we tried to find a geocache but it was just too hot to walk the couple of miles on the lighthouse trail. We went into the town of Canyon and got a few things at Walmart we had forgotten to bring for camping then toured the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum. Wow. There was even a replica of a full size oil well. It took us over 2 hours and we were both too tired to continue. We stopped for early dinner at The Buffalo Cafe and with our ticket stubs from the show we each got a free dessert. Broke Weight Watcher's but it was good. The afternoon was spent just sitting and visiting in the shade and light breeze and that evening we went on a ranger lead hike under the full moon.
Every morning we heard wild turkey's gobbling but our last morning they were right in our campsite.
As we were leaving we stopped to see this replica of the dugout that Charles Goodnight lived in when he settled in the canyon.
As we skirted Amarillo we saw the famous Cadillacs embedded in the ground along side the interstate.

We returned to Ute Lake early Sunday morning to find our motorhome's slides all closed up. Our friends decided with 60 mph gusts and hail our rig was better off closed up. Several of the awnings were damaged on the others rigs. Great to have friends who look after us. It is still very windy but it's great to be home. We both took naps as sleeping on the ground on thin sleeping pads in the heat isn't the most restful. To top off the weekend we had a fantastic sunset.

5 comments:

Diana said...

You're looking awfully skinny! Don't waste away to nothing.

owner said...

Doc says 20# more to go. Actually wanted 35# more but we compromised.

Diana said...

Just saw that thunderstorm video, couldn't get it before. That's amazing! You had perfect timing with your taping.

Barbara and Ron said...

I love the lightning video, but I'm confused - was it real or staged? Either way, great timing!

owner said...

That was the staged storm. Good thing the real thing was a few miles away at our campsite.