Welcome to Michael & Karen’s autumn 2023 adventure, where there will be death defying events, beautiful scenery, and lots of love! It is, after all, our 31st anniversary!

This year we decided to travel to the panhandle of Texas to visit the Palo Duro Canyon. This had been on our bucket list for many years, going back to our days of doing our travels on a motorcycle. It may have taken us some time to get there, but we finally did.

To start off, we stayed at the Hampton Inn in Canyon Tx, which was 1) convenient to the park and 2) had a free EV charger, meaning that we could drive around all day in the park and then fully charge back up each night as part of the hotel’s amenities! I don’t expect perks like this to last forever, but for now, they are much welcomed!

We drove from our home in East Texas to Canyon on Saturday and got all checked in for the night. Sunday morning, we rose and attended worship serviced at a sister church in Amarillo, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, PCA. After a great service, we had lunch and headed out to the park to, as our tagline says, Share God’s Creation One Click at a Time!

Upon entering the park and heading to the visitor center, this was our first real view of the canyon!

While at the entrance to the park I asked the park rangers about any easy short hikes that we might take to get acclimated to the area. They said, “Well, a ranger-led one is about to start in 10 minutes. We’ll meet you at the visitor’s center!”

Great! We’re already off to a start and will have a ranger with us to boot!

The hike, about a mile in length, started at the overlook and traveled around an area where an old CCA camp had been located back in the 1930s, building much of the infrastructure of the park. You can still see some remnants of the structures on the plateau below us.

It wasn’t very long after we started this “short, easy hike”, that any cloud cover that we had started to dissipate. That was unfortunate. We had planned on this time of year, as the first of Autumn, in hopes that the weather would have started to turn cooler. Unfortunately, this was not yet the case as the temps were creeping into the upper 90s.

As we continued the hike, both of us began to feel the effects of the sun’s unblocked UV rays as well as the heat. We quickly learned that there is not much shade in this part of Texas. We are used to the large pine trees of East Texas, not the smaller mesquite trees out here. While we had taken plenty of water, we found ourselves needing to stop several times. Luckily, this was a very small hiking party with the ranger, and they did not mind the extra stops.

It was about this time that the ranger pointed out that we are at a higher elevation than we are used to back home as well! That is something that we had not even factored into our planning! Here at the canyon rim we were at about 3,400 feet above sea-level. Back home we are closer to 400. It may not sound like a lot, but we’re not as young as we used to be and haven’t been much above our altitude in a while, except for our sky-diving adventure we did for our birthday’s last year, but that’s a story for another time.

We continued on the hike, taking several breaks whenever there was a bit of shade. This was not looking like a good beginning for our adventure! But, as they say, we carry on!

So, as it turned out, we had made a couple of errors on our first hike. 1) Not realizing that we were at a higher altitude than we are accustomed to, and 2) starting a hike at 2 in the afternoon when it was the hottest part of the day! These are two mistakes we will not be repeating! The middle of the day, the clouds dry up and the sun beats down on man and beast alike

The ranger told us to look out for a couple of this on our hike, in hopes that we might see some of God’s creation at work. First, there is the Texas Horned Lizard, or “horny toads” as we called them growing up in Oklahoma. They are very rare, but this is one of the places where they can still be seen. The second thing was to look out for mating tarantulas! Oh joy (Karen thought). We’ll be looking out for both, along with rattlesnakes in the days to come!

After what seemed like forever, this “short and easy” hike was finally over. We learned some lessons that will serve us well over the next few days. This was just our introduction to the park, and the first day is not even over yet. There is still so much to see. (Death defying event #1 complete).

After this, we got in the car, cranked up the AC, and found a place where we could park and cool back down for a while. Then, we were ready to head back out for some short excursions to finish the day.

Come back later for part 2!

Michael & Karen

All word and images copyright 2003, MHampton Photography