First of all: thank god I managed to actually sleep last night. The Holiday Inn Express was delightfully cold, but coming off of a midshift it can be real hit or miss. Thrashing around in my bed at 11:30 pm, I feared the worst. But I awoke to the sound of my parents and the alarm at 7:00 am, so clearly something went right.
One standard Holiday Inn Express breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, gravy, cinnamon roll) and one sunrise later, the three of us were off from Canyon toward the early-morning sun and Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We arrived at the entrance right at 8:30 – not so early as to be punishing, but early enough to savor the relative cool of the early-morning hours before the temperature approached a record-shattering 100 degrees in the afternoon. Or at least, it should have been. Instead, fueled by Spring Break traffic, the entrance station traffic took a full 45 minutes. While I sat steaming in the front seat of the car, the sun slowly rose higher into the blue-white sky. A pallid morning haze arose in the canyon. You could feel the temperature rising.
And it turned out not to really matter when we got into the park. Our preferred trail to the Lighthouse is about a 6-mile round trip which you’d expect to take 3-4 hours hiking, maybe a little more with parents. Well, the NWS had issued a heat advisory specifically for Palo Duro Canyon with air temps forecast to approach 101 by the afternoon. That triggered some sort of automatic response from the state park to close the hottest, most-exposed trails at 11:00 am. That included The Lighthouse, Fortress Cliff, the Rock Garden, the whole shebang. We weren’t even in the gate before 9:00 at this point, but I mean… it didn’t matter. How were we supposed to know, anyway? When my dad asked the hapless ranger at the entrance station (so that was why it was so slow getting in) where the information was posted, the ranger said “Uhh… we put it on our Facebook, I think”. I would like to formally request Palo Duro Canyon State Park to put this kind of info on their official website in addition to Facebook.
So now everyone in the car was a little grumpy (or more than a little grumpy). While my mom used the restroom in the Visitor Center, my dad and I looked at a park map and tried to find a plan B/C/D on the fly. We landed on the Kiowa Trail down on the canyon floor, assuming that any trail that extended up onto the canyon rim was among the closed group. The Kiowa Trail isn’t the most exciting 3-mile loop on earth, but the description promised plenty of river views and we were a little desperate.
The parking lot at the group camp area was empty, at least. The morning was warming rapidly, but still felt quite comfortable down in the shade of the cottonwoods and junipers along the riverside. Yes, there was a riverside. The Prairie Dog Town Fork flowed, a small but defiant trickle of clear water fed by the Caprock springs. I explained to my parents that when the storms arrive and water eventually starts flowing later this spring (god willing), the Prairie Dog Town Fork will quickly turn into a raging torrent threatening the park road, at which point Palo Duro will enter into one of its furious and beautiful June blooms. It will happen, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Either way, I’m very glad we didn’t quit the park in a huff at the entrance station (though I’ll admit I considered it). The Kiowa Trail was shady in the mid-morning sun and mostly bereft of hikers, a family and their Big Gulps notwithstanding.
There were birds all over the floor, as well. I heard and saw grebes, woodpeckers, cardinals, roadrunners, and even a potential golden eagle at one point. Some of those photos are on my camera, but let’s not make these daily blogs more difficult than they need to be, shall we? A few people hiked with their dogs, which was fortunately the only land-based animal we saw. No rattlesnakes, and they were not missed.
There was a spot where the river approached a cliffside with the road 50 feet above, which let us hike through some pure-red rock speckled by layers of gleaming gypsum. I found a little side cave/canyon dugout that could be scrambled into easily and climbed up to claim it as my own home.
Check out those little gypsum folds!
Before too long, the trail reached the park road at the Soapberry area. Inspired by what had so far been a lovely morning, I suggested we get a little ambitious and follow the Upper Comanche Loop on the way back. It meandered along the canyon floor for a while, then traversed to the eastern side of the canyon and rode the wall. This gave a great view of the head of Palo Duro. Unfortunately, it also got us out into a sun that was beating down ever more mercilessly.
The last mile was a bit of a slog, especially when you consider how much energy I wasted in climbing a hoodoo. Altogether though, I’d call it pretty much the perfect distance (and finishing time) for the hike. Just another reminder that you should never get too locked in on your plans and always be adaptable when traveling. Which is something that I am so good at, of course.
Something I learned today: there is a trading post at Palo Duro Canyon that has a built-in restaurant. My parents actually had to explain that to me, which is kind of embarrassing when you’re supposed to be the expert somewhere. The fare inside the trading post was pretty simple -I got a hoagie and fries, my parents got burgers – but it was also cheap and pretty good. The only downside was that the trading post was overwhelmed with little piggies in all different form and fashion. It was a claustrophobic experience.
I really wanted to find the sno-cone truck who hangs out at the Lighthouse trailhead, but the truck was parked in disuse near the park trading post. How is it a record hot day on Spring Break and you aren’t there plying your delicious ice-and-syrup concoctions? But we somehow came across something just as delightful and way more surprising. My dad was driving down along the river when all of a sudden.
“Was that Sam???”
I swore I had just seen him. To confirm, my dad swung the car around. “Oh yeah, that’s Stephen”.
So he swung it around one more time, pausing traffic indiscriminately. We drove by a third time and I hollered “SAMUEL”.
Turns out Sam, Stephen, Maddy, Kevin, and Logan were staying at an AirBNB in Amarillo so they could do some heat wave hiking of their own during Spring Break. They’d arrived too late in the morning to hit The Lighthouse same as us and were going to return and try it the next day. In the meantime, they’d been hiking the Lower Comanche Loop while we hiked the Upper Loop. And somehow we’d stumbled across them in this whole big canyon crawling with people. What a small world!
After a full sight-seeing loop inside the canyon, the three of us agreed that we were ready to leave Palo Duro and make the four-hour drive to Roswell, New Mexico for the night. My parents switched drivers in Hereford after getting gas (and milkshakes!). There isn’t a whole lot to report from the drive to Roswell unless you like endless parched ranchland, dust devils, or the city of Clovis, New Mexico. We got into Roswell late in the afternoon just as the mid-90s heat was breaking. The Roswell Hampton Inn is pretty clean and actually has potable water unlike the Holiday Inn Express last night. Roswell is Roswell; as far as eastern New Mexico towns go, it could be far worse (hi, Clayton!). They lean into the alien stuff pretty heavily as they should.
And I will give Sara’s Mediterranean in town a full-hearted endorsement. My shawarma wrap tonight was full-on excellent.
Tomorrow we leave early in the morning to pick Elizabeth up in El Paso, then it’s on to White Sands in what might be the hottest March day ever recorded in the area. Hopefully we can beat the heat and enjoy ourselves!
