Today was a travel day and my birthday. I am 40 again this year. We broke camp at Palo Duro Canyon SP and made the very steep climb up to the rim. We continued to Amarillo but noticed a quiet clicking noise from Charlotte’s engine when she was idling at traffic signals. We got on I-40 / Route 66 and went west out of the Texas Panhandle and into New Mexico.
By the time we pulled over in Tucumcari, the click was no longer quiet. We set up our trailer in a funky little RV park called Cactus RV and went looking for a mechanic. Bear in mind that Tucumcari is not a big metropolis but merely a large gas station in the middle of nowhere. We started at the former NAPA store and asked if they knew of a local mechanic. They suggested one but when we got there, that mechanic suggested that since our motor is a diesel, we would have better luck at a place called Ray’s a mile south of town.
Fortunately for us, Ray was open and his shop is open 7 days a week. The bad news was that the click was a cracked flywheel and the closest one is in Dallas. We will be staying a bit longer than the one night we scheduled. Maybe the flywheel cracked on the horrible steep pull out of Palo Duro Canyon.
The Cactus RV park has full hookups, wi-fi and cable TV so we will have stuff to do which is great because there’s not much scenery, cultural or other activity in Tucumcari. The park is also located about 400 feet down Route 66 from Del’s Restaurant where we went to eat after getting the bad news at Ray’s. The food was great and the bill was small. They can expect more of our business in the next few days unless a flywheel pops up at the mechanic’s shop. I’m glad we scheduled in enough return trip time for mishaps like this. At least we ain’t out in the middle of the featureless Panhandle plains broken down on the shoulder.

This morning we started the day by driving out of Palo Duro Canyon State Park and wandering into Amarillo for breakfast or lunch at Youngblood’s Cafe. The cafe was highly hyped on the internet but it turned out to be extremely mediocre. My chicken fried steak was nominal but the fries were flimsy and soggy. Peg’s cheese burger was very good but she got the same fries. The prices for all this manna were low; we escaped only $22 poorer, minus tip.
We picked up some fuel for our departure from the stunning state of Texas tomorrow. We have picked up Route 66 (also normally called I-40) for our passage back to San Diego and it looks like we are headed from here to Tucumcari, NM. We then headed back to Palo Duro where we decided to pull over near the park trading post and take a very short stroll to a wildlife viewing blind. If we hadn’t cruised through the trading post parking lot yesterday, we would not have seen the tiny sign directing sharp-eyed tourists to the blind.
Up until today, the wildlife we have spotted in the park has been limited to five wild turkeys, roadrunners, cardinals, mockingbirds, vultures and hawks as we have explored the magnificent canyon terrain. Today, however, we got to hide in the blind and scope out the dozens of other species that have been bribed into the park bird feeding station. We spotted canyon wrens, more cardinals, some very chubby doves, a couple varieties of finch, spotted towhees, a brown thrasher, a cedar waxwing, rock wrens, pine siskins, more golden-fronted woodpeckers and a few species we couldn’t identify. The blind is only about 15 feet from the feeders and folks who don’t make a racket or move about spastically can be treated to an amazing bird display. As we left the blind, we crossed paths with a collared lizard but he was only about 5 inches long so he yielded.
Today is our last full day in Texas. We came into the state on January 9 and we have been superbly entertained for the last two months while exploring this great place. The state is massive and there is a lot of driving but the roadside scenery is mostly gorgeous. We found we like it around San Antonio, Rockport, Galveston and, particularly, Columbus. Copper Breaks and Palo Duro State Parks offer up stunning scenery and abundant wildlife. The national wildlife refuges here are filled with all kinds of creatures.
Being from California, I am terrified by tornadoes and we certainly did not like finding we were in the nasty zone when we were at Lake Conroe but we didn’t end up in Oz so it turned out okay. If I had one wish for this state, I would wish the Texans would stop littering their highways and byways or find a way to clean up the roadsides because abundant, ubiquitous plastic shopping bags, drink and food containers, black and while bulk trash bags and a gold mine of aluminum and glass beverage containers sure clutter up the foregrounds in all the views from the highways. It is tragic that this beautiful state is speckled with crap thrown from the vehicles of uncaring jerks.
You can see some of what we saw today if you click here

We started the day by doing a bit of exploring in Palo Duro Canyon SP. Not too far from where our trailer is set up there is a big cave in the side of the canyon and, mysteriously, it is shown in park literature as The Big Cave. We strolled over to give it a glance and noted that a ways back in the cave there is a hole through to daylight. The cave is pretty big. You could live in it if you wanted to be in a cave near Amarillo. The colors of the surrounding rock formations are pretty amazing.
From the cave we jumped back in Charlotte and drove to the trailhead for the Pioneer Nature Trail. We didn’t spot any pioneers but did spot a flock of grazing wild turkeys and a bunch of roadrunners. The trail loops from a big, snazzy building called the Mack Dick Group Pavilion which was not open. At the far end of the trail, there is a bench where we hung out for a while and listened to wind and birds. It was pretty sublime.
We had finished our cave visit and our nature walk and noted we still had plenty of time left in the day so we decided to leave the park and drive up by Amarillo to see the Cadillac Ranch. Cadillac Ranch is not a ranch. It is public art that consists of 9 old Cadillacs with their front ends buried in the earth in the middle of a flat field of dead grass. We didn’t pause here for long.
Our next destination was Jack Sizemore’s RV Museum in Amarillo. It is located in a metal building behind Jack Sizemore RV which is a big RV dealership and parts house. As soon as we went in the door we were in a room of vintage beautiful Harley Davidson motorcycles and some travel trailers built in the 1930’s and they were in great shape. In an adjacent room was a collection of a couple dozen other RV’s, the earliest a 1921 Ford Lamsteed Kampkar and the newest being a spiffy 1976 FMC owned by makeup magnate Max Factor. Every RV in the place is in either excellent original condition or has been accurately restored. The 1948 Flxible bus/RV in the museum is the one used in the comedy movie RV with the now-dead Robin Williams.
We had run out of daylight so we headed back to our Barbarian Invader in Palo Duro Canyon.
For some Amarillo and Palo Duro pix from today, click here

We awoke in the flat bottom of gorgeous Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The wind blew hard last night but it pretty much quit by this morning, leaving us gorgeous clear skies for today’s sunrise. Our $24 a night premium spot (what the hell – a regular RV spot in the normal mortal persons / peon campground is $22) has absolutely stunning views of the spectacular canyon walls all around us. It also has water and electrical but we only used the electrical since we knew it was going to freeze last night. It did.
We burned most of our fuel yesterday driving into the jet stream so our first item on the agenda was refueling Charlotte. It took quite a while for us to get out of the park because we kept pulling over to look at the magnificent canyon scenery. Quite a bit later, we exited the park and drove about 20 miles to gas up our truck in Canyon. We figured we might as well stock up on liquor, too, so we drove another 10 miles to a good liquor store. We then turned back toward Palo Duro Canyon for some lazy exploring.
We stopped by the visitor center and went in for some education. There is a gift store there but little education. We also drove to something called the Mack Dick Pavilion which is a very nice but completely empty structure. However, the gorgeous views from the canyon rim and the canyon bottom are what really make this place. Colors similar to the Painted Desert over in Arizona can be spotted here. The rock formations in the park are massive and impressive. Palo Duro Canyon is spectacular.
There are some pix of this place. Click here

Today was another driving day going west across the amazing state of Texas. After a couple days at Copper Breaks State Park near Quanah, we took off up a back road about 15 miles from town and then turned west on US-287. It was pretty breezy when we left the park but by the time we hit 287 the wind had increased to about 20 knots out of the southwest or directly at the side of our massive fifth wheel trailer as we drove toward Amarillo. For the first couple hours, the wind was merely irritating as it caused me to steer a constantly-changing direction to counteract the wind.
By the time we pulled into Wichita Falls, the wind speed was increasing and the road got narrower. The area around Wichita Falls has almost made a complete transformation from the hardwood, cedar and juniper forests of east Texas into the almost exclusively flat grasslands with some cotton fields thrown in.
West of Wichita Falls, strange things started occurring due to the ever-increasing wind speed. When I looked in the side rearview mirror, I could see the trailer moving contrary to the direction I was leading it; it would almost go out of view of the left side mirror before swinging back into line. Also, since a good deal of the second half of today’s four hour drive was driving into a quartering headwind, our fuel economy was shit. We might have got 8 mpg. As we were bucking the winds, we passed an old guy from New Mexico in the westbound slow lane driving a early 1950’s Hudson at about 50. It looked very snazzy from the passing lane but, as we went by, I detected the worrisome sound of imminent lower end failure escaping from his ancient engine. He may be afoot by now.
About 50 miles short of Amarillo, we turned due west on a two-lane and drove about 30 miles to the town of Canyon. From there we drove back east for about 15 miles to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We paid the fees and descended into the canyon, alleged to be the 2nd biggest canyon in the U.S., after Grand.
The road down into the canyon has a long 10% downgrade and those with crummy trailer brakes may want to look before they leap. Our Barbarian Invader was very courteous on the way down the steep, serpentine road to the Juniper camping loop. We set up and the view is great but the drive in the wind tunnel all day and the squirrelly road into our loop compelled us to climb into the trailer and drink some very nice tequila. We’ll explore tomorrow.
There’s a trio of pix of today’s travel that can be seen if you click here

Last night the wind was steady at about 25 knots but by this morning it was down to a nice breeze. The mostly cloudy weather yesterday broke up this morning and the sun came out to produce a gorgeous northern Texas day. Right after breakfast, some extremely chubby quail and a couple big roadrunners came around our trailer on food scavenging operations. The roadrunners are lightning-quick, picking bugs from the grass. None seem to escape.
We took a bit of a driving tour down all the park roads to scope out the campground before pulling over at a parking lot next to Lake Cedar Breaks. The Lake is located at the bottom of a scenic ravine with fascinating rock formations and colors. We spotted a couple families fishing along the lake shore.
We found a “Nature Trail” that was shown on the park map as being 1/2 mile so we decided to give it a whirl. It was a path that allows you to get to some great overlook points and it has little poles with numeric labels installed along the trail but we didn’t have a guide that told us what the labels represented. I’m sure whatever was being described was fascinating. The trail also seemed to be more than half a mile or I’m in really terrible shape. There are quite a few stairs along the trail but none so massive that an old guy couldn’t slowly make his way up and down the primitive assemblies.
We spotted more roadrunners once we got back to the Invader. They are big, healthy-looking guys and the combination of their speedy gait, their displays of big retractable Mohawk feathers and extraordinary colors make for great bird-watching. I even got to see the NASCAR race after we got home. What a great day.
There are some pix if you click here

Today was another travel day in our six week trek west from Louisiana and Arkansas to San Diego, CA. We gathered up our stuff and departed from Lake Conroe TT near Gordonville and headed south on TX-377 until we got to US-82 where we turned west. We followed 82 into Wichita Falls where it morphed into US-287 without really looking any different. There were lots of giant wind turbines along the way.
The area around Lake Conroe is at an elevation of around 400′, the terrain was gently rolling hills and the vegetation was leafless hardwoods, junipers and scruffy cedars. As we went west, we slowly were gaining elevation. As we progressed, we noted some of the hardwoods are budding, some of the flowering trees are putting on a show, the junipers have shrunk some and more land is devoted to agriculture because it is flatter. We kept going west until we had gone about 200 miles. In Quanah, TX, we turned south on TX-6 and pulled into Copper Breaks State Park.
The park has both tent and RV camping with electrical and water hookups. No sewer here but they have a dump station. The park is at about 1500′ elevation. Although the surrounding terrain is basically flat, the park is located in a gorge with a lake in the bottom. There are some neat surrounding rock formations.
Unfortunately, skies were cloudy all day and the wind was gaining in strength as we traveled west and now it is steady at about 25 miles an hour. We won’t be going for any strolls tonight but tomorrow looks pretty bright. If the weather improves, we are in a Dark Skies facility where night skies can be breathtaking if you can see beyond the low clouds. We’re waiting.
The sunset, as usual, was gorgeous. There’s a picture of it along with a picture of a nice house if you click here

We didn’t have much on the schedule today so we went exploring. We started by going again to the Country Kitchen in Kingston, about 20 miles north of the Oklahoma border. The food was terrific again.
From Kingston we drove west for about 25 miles until we came to a road to Lake Murray State Park south of Ardmore. We imagine this place must be gorgeous when all the hardwoods (and there are plenty of them) have leaves but we were a bit early for that. The lake is beautiful regardless of the state of the lake shore vegetation. Apparently, Lake Murray is fed by springs while every other lake we have seen in northern Texas is brown because they are fed by rivers with tall mud banks.
About three-quarters of the way around the park loop road, we came to the park visitor center and a structure called the Tucker Tower which was built originally as a house for a bigwig. If I was a bigwig, I would have been happy to live here because the view from the tower is superb. Peggy climbed most of the way up before balking at an old spiral staircase.
We drove into multiple campgrounds here and quite a few have full hookups for RVs. Maybe we will stay here if we ever return to tornado country again. We see many houses around here with bunkers built near them so the locals can take shelter when funnel clouds appear. Dolts in flimsy RVs are SOL when the weather gets violent.
We have run into some interesting folks here. This morning, we were chatting with our waitress and she found we were from California. Right away she asked if we had ever been on The Price Is Right on TV. When we said “no,” she said she always wanted to go to California to get on the show. Hmmmmmm. We also noted a local sign maker who’s business does not appear to be doing very well. We speculate that one of the reasons he is not prospering is that his sign over the shop states, in big letters, “Sings Made Here.” We didn’t have the heart to explain it to him.
We got a few photos along the way and at the visitor center. You can see them if you click here

We knew it was coming. It was inevitable. Today was laundry day. However, it was not as bad as it normally seems. Here at Lake Texoma, the Thousand Trails laundry facility is located up a road that leads to the lake shore so we were able to cruise down to the water and check out the wildlife.
The turtles, who were enjoying the bright sun while lounging on a floating log across the lake finger, bailed off as soon as we were in sight. Fortunately, we had plenty of time to spare so we got to watch them slowly sneak back onto their sundeck. There were also ducks and geese serenely cruising across the water. It is amazing how much wildlife you can see in Texas if willing to merely shut up and remain motionless. Binoculars help.

We had such a great time at Hagerman NWR the day before yesterday that we elected to go again today. We had an early breakfast and jumped into the truck for the drive. This time, we stayed exclusively on back roads; not one had a dotted line down the center and most didn’t have paving. It was great.
While the weather at the Refuge was overcast a couple days ago, it was clear skies but windy today. We retraced our steps down all the passable roads and were again rewarded with amazing glimpses of the abundant wildlife there. We identified a couple more birds and took photos but great distances and near-total ignorance about birds will keep us working to identify the new guys. There seem to be plenty of terns, plovers, killdeer, vultures, cormorants, great blue herons, American pelicans, snow geese, coots and egrets; mallards and northern shoveler ducks are ubiquitous. We also scared up a variety of songbirds that were lurking in the dry spots of the enormous marshy area. All the turtles we saw were very bashful, bailing off their floating logs and into the water as soon as we got close enough to really see them. Smart little guys.
Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge is a great place to spend a few hours watching the gorgeous birds. Although there are trails at the Refuge, almost everything can be seen from a car on the auto loop. It is a superb location for bird watching.
On the way back to our RV spot on Lake Texoma, we spotted an anomaly – a Texan that had a truck parked in his yard that was taller than his house. This is indeed an interesting part of the world.
We shot a few pix that can be seen by clicking here