Loyd Park

We arrived at Loyd Park on Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie, TX, today. We had a brief celebration when we crossed the Oklahoma/Texas border and saw the "Welcome to Texas" sign. That means welcome home to us, even though as full timers we say "Home is where we park it."

Grand Prairie is a suburb of Dallas near Arlington and near Mansfield, where my three youngest grandchildren and their parents live. Kelley and Molly are not too far away either. This is our first stay at Joe Pool Lake, and we are lucky to have the most desirable site, #211, right on the water.

After a day of traveling and dealing with having to get a new battery for the truck, it was great to see the kids, but also nice to settle down and listen to the crickets. Read more!

Movin' On: Ardmore, OK

Our last visit to Hidden Lake RV Resort was in May 2013. It was a memorable visit because storms and tornado warnings sent us running for their new storm shelter. This time the weather stayed sunny and clear. The park has added a new building that houses the office and an RV repair business. They've also added a large water slide to their swimming lake. This is an attractive park and we like it for an overnight, but it's very close to I-35, and the noise level is troublesome for us.

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Hike to a Nice Little Lake

The ground dried up enough today after recent rains that we were able to take a short hike to a nearby lake. The terrain here is quite a contrast to the dramatic landscapes of the high plains. Everything is green, and the trees are tall.

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Casino Stopover

Lucky Star Casino in Clinton, OK, is just off I-40 and a convenient stopover on our way. The RV parking facilities are just a large open parking lot with a couple of utility poles, each with several electrical outlets. But you can't beat free 50 amp electricity with great security patrols.

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Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Today we visited the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, which is located in Canyon, TX, on the campus of West Texas A & M University. It's a bit of a hodge podge, with a large section devoted to the petroleum industry. A huge old oil rig was transported and set up in a large window in front, and most of the second floor has exhibits about various aspects of petroleum drilling, refining, use, and culture. That floor also has a couple of art galleries and a large gallery of weaponry, mainly guns.

The part we most enjoyed was the group of exhibits on Life on the Plains. It examined the survival challenges various cultures had faced--water, food, shelter, clothing, transportation--and how they had met these challenges. The discussion revolved around technology, sociology, and ideology. A video highlighted these themes. The idea that conflict is part of human interaction is interwoven with stories of the Comanches driving out the Apaches and themselves being conquered by the Euro-Americans.

A rather vivid video showed the butchering of a bison and the uses to which various parts were put.

We missed a fair amount of the exhibits. They don't seem laid out in any logical manner. Our time was limited, and it was very cold in the building. When it was nearing 5 p.m., we left and went to the Imperial Taproom, a new restaurant on the town square, for dinner.

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Palo Duro Canyon State Park: the Lighthouse Trail

We got up early this morning to beat the heat and managed to get to the Lighthouse trailhead by 8:30 a.m., when it was still only 70 degrees.  The park trail map warns, "Do take plenty of water, as most heat-related injuries and deaths to people and pets occur on this trail." Caution duly noted, we carried five 20 oz. bottles of water.

The trail is rated as moderate, but most of it is quite easy, and the scenery is spectacular. Parts of the trail are washed out or rutted from the many flash floods in the canyon, so we were glad to have our hiking sticks.

The first sight we came to was Capitol Peak.

At about 1.4 miles, we came to a viewpoint and got our first glimpses of our destination, the iconic Lighthouse formation, which is a National Natural Landmark and the symbol of the park.

At the 2.7 mile mark, we found a picnic table and a sign indicating "End of Trail," but we knew from our online research that it was possible to get to the base of the formation via a .3 mile rock scramble. You can't actually see the Lighthouse from the end of the trail.  I left Ken at the picnic table with my backpack and headed up what  is basically a rocky watercourse.

The effort was definitely worthwhile. The formation is quite impressive close up.

It is also possible to climb the formation itself, but I left that to younger, stronger climbers. On the way down, I encountered something unusual: a person with very loud speakers in his backpack. Definitely didn't add to the ambiance!

When I got back down to the picnic table, Ken had company. Several mountain bikers had arrived, including one man with a young daughter out for her first "real" mountain bike ride. Ken said that man was a helicopter pilot and had told him that the guy with the loud music was "the kind of person I often have to rescue in the canyon."

We were glad to get back to the trailhead by 12:30 p.m. We encountered many other hikers who were getting a later start than we did. It was over 90 degrees when we got back to the truck, and we had used a good bit of our water. I wouldn't have wanted to be out on the trail any later in the day.

On the way out of the park we stopped to take a few photos. Here's the Fortress Cliff.

We stopped at the Interpretive Center near the entrance. It includes some really nice displays on the geology and history of the canyon. We were a bit taken aback to see and hear some references to "hostiles" and "red boys" in the story of Colonel McKenzie and the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon. McKenzie and his troops were sent to run the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne and other warriors back to the reservation. The troops captured 1,500 to 2,000 horses, which McKenzie ordered slaughtered to prevent the Native Americans from recapturing them. Read more!

Santa Rosa, NM, to Amarillo, TX

We spent the night in a New Mexico rest area near Santa Rosa. Of course we had to share the space with some noisy semi trucks, but we got a pretty good parking spot.

We drove to Oasis RV Resort in Amarillo, TX, an uneventful trip along I-40. Our site here, #52, is one of over a hundred 75' pull thrus. We are planning on doing some sightseeing in the area for the next couple of days.

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Tent Rocks

We got up early this morning to get ready for a hike at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. It's quite close to Cochiti campground.

We hiked the slot canyon trail. It started out flat and sandy, but after the first half mile, when it branched off the Cave Loop Trail, the going got a bit more challenging. The scenery was spectacular, and we stopped for photos. The trail leads through some narrow spots and requires some minimal rock scrambling. Then we came to the steep switchbacks.

About this time, large numbers of students began to pass us. It turned out to be three busloads of sophomores from a charter school in Albuquerque. I was glad to see kids out in the National Parks, but some of them were a bit disruptive--yelling noisily, sitting in the path, and one group of girls even singing "Summer Nights" from Grease with a boom box. By the time we reached the top, most of them had begun to head back down. We sat and rested on some rocks and chatted with a couple of women while waiting for a large group to leave the end point of the hike. The views from the point were awesome. Read more!

Cochiti Lake

We left Farmington this morning and drove to Cochiti Lake COE Campground north of Albuquerque. We are in Buffalo Grove site #63, which was very easy to back into. All the sites in Buffalo Grove look new. They're long and paved and have separate car parking and covered picnic tables. Very nice.

After a bit the sun came out again and we went for a walk through the campground. We were rewarded with this rainbow arcing over the lake.

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Another Day at the Bisti Wilderness

We hiked out into the Bisti Wilderness again today, hoping to see more of the named formations. We did find a few of the famous ones, and we were impressed by many other hoodoos and formations. We were out hiking for four hours, so when we got back to the truck, we were hot and tired. Good thing we had air conditioning and lunch in a cooler!

There is always more to see in a place like Bisti. People keep coming back here, drawn by the strange formations and alien seeming landscape. In the sign-in book at the parking lot, the two parties who signed in before us were from Croatia and Denmark. Some people don't sign in and out, so it's hard to tell how many people hike around here, but we encountered three other groups out today.

On a mound of reddish "clinkers," clay metamorphosed by a coal fire that burned here for centuries

Siltstone caps on these formations are a rich reddish brown.

One of the famous "cracked eggs"

More eggs....

Two windows formed by overhanging siltstone

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Mesa Verde National Park--Day One

We drove in to Chapin Mesa today. That's where the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum, the Cliff Palace, Balcony House, and Spruce House are located. The drive in is winding and narrow, with hairpin turns and sheer drop offs, so it takes nearly an hour to go the 22 miles. We had tickets for the 3:30 p.m. tour of Balcony House, so we decided to start with a hike on the Petroglyph Point Trail.

It's a bit challenging at points.

The destination is a the largest petroglyph panel in the park. It's not huge, but the petroglyphs are clear and near the trail so they can be easily seen.

Even though it wasn't a very long hike, we were really tired, probably because of the altitude. We hurried to eat our picnic lunch before our tour started. We were cautioned before we began that "The Balcony House tour requires visitors to descend a 100 foot staircase into the canyon; climb a 32 foot ladder; crawl through a 12 foot, 18 inches wide tunnel; and clamber up an additional 60 feet on ladders and stone steps." We were game. The original inhabitants of these cliff dwellings would have faced even more daunting conditions, using hand and toe holds to negotiate the sheer walls of their homes.

It is amazing to see these constructions still standing after nearly 800 years. They were built using only stone tools, so all the blocks were shaped by hand and hand carried to the alcoves in the sheer face of the cliff walls.

What must life have been like for these intrepid people?

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Mesa Verde RV Resort

We arrived today at Mesa Verde RV Resort. It's very close to the entrance to the park. We have a nice long pull-thru site with a great view of a mesa across the highway.

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