On May 11, we embarked on an eight day trip to visit the Texas Panhandle and remaining North Texas parks. It would also be Wanda’s last trip with us as it was getting harder and harder to fit 5 full size humans, a dog and all of our stuff in her. We were optimistic our 30 year old camper, after 10 years with us, had one more run in her. My Dad was meeting us for the beginning of the trip and would be staying in an Airbnb on the ridge of Palo Duro Canyon. Our first leg of the trip was the 9.5 hour drive straight through to Palo Duro Canyon State Park and we were rolling by 5:30 that Monday morning. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure cruise between the head wind that only got stronger as we travelled further north and anxiety over Wanda making the trip. But we managed and arrived in one piece (so far) and were set up by 6:30!
For the entirety of this trip, the kids opted to stay in our large tent that we started out our camping adventures in over ten years ago while Nathan, Sally and myself had the pop up camper. It turned out to be a great set up for essentially 5 full size humans to have space and storage. Also meant less abuse on Wanda. After set up, we spent the rest of the evening exploring the campgrounds. Our campsite was super spacious and perfect for our arrangement and for entertaining scenery. The sunset put on a show in the canyon changing the colors of the rocks and cliff faces and was a sweet reward for a hard travel day.
In the morning, I enjoyed watching the sun illuminate the opposite side of the canyon while I drank my coffee. It truly was a beautiful camp ground. At breakfast time, we got our first introduction to “Scratch,” the paisano with a scratched up leg that caused him to move with a hop. He would end up hanging out with us each morning and evening enjoying Sally’s water bowl and little bits of leftovers.
We kicked off our sightseeing driving tour with a stop at “Big Cave” for a short but dynamic hike up and into the hole in the canyon wall.
Next we went to the much anticipated “Rock Garden” but actually found it to be a little underwhelming with many of the boulders spread out and not exceptionally unique. The kids did find a large interesting pile and had a bit of a climbing adventure though.
We had our picnic lunch break at a day use area then walked over to a restored dugout that functioned as housing for the cowboys when the area was a cattle ranch.
Our final stop for the day was the famous lookout point for some pictures and a walk through in the museum. Afterwards we drove to Dad’s Airbnb on the ridge and checked out the views from up top.
The next morning, we were up and on the trail by 7am for the iconic “Lighthouse” rock structure. Heat advisories had already begun for the season and the park closes the trail after 11am until 5pm everyday in an attempt to reduce heat stroke rescues. It’s a roughly 5.5 mile round trip hike with quite the rock scramble at the end to get yourself onto the plateau between the 2 hoodoos. But we pulled it off and thoroughly enjoyed the sights and lack of crowds.
It took us 4 hours to complete and the last hour was really starting to get hot. Mine and Weston’s hiking shoes were not treating us well either and we basically limped the last mile unfortunately. Needless to say, they couldn’t come off fast enough at the car haha! And of course it always surprises me when we come out of a hike like that and see people just heading out on the trail dragging along little kids or dogs and not one water bottle in sight. It’s like they WANT to be a rescue problem for the park staff :(. All I know is we were glad to have accomplished this hike and had done it early!
Afterwards we met up with Dad for lunch and victory beers exploring a couple of restaurants and breweries in the town of Canyon. Unfortunately, our last night in the campground was super windy and chaotic and nobody really got any sleep. But the show must go on and we got loaded up and on the road for our next campsite at Caprock Canyon State Park.
Turns out allotting 3 nights in Palo Duro was a bit much in my opinion. The park is gorgeous and offers so many scenic hiking trails beyond Lighthouse and it also offers a variety of campground scenery options. The Mesquite loop that we stayed in was a desert rocky landscape while Hackberry is a grassy area beside a creek bed and tree covered. However, I feel like much of the park can be seen as a driving tour with a night or 2 and a full day visit. The weather threw us a bunch of curve balls during our visit and it is work to camp there without a fully enclosed rig. In the end, though, we were glad we put in the work and experienced “Texas’ Grand Canyon.”
-Lindsay
