Heading East: Palo Duro Canyon, TX & Oklahoma City, OK

After digging out of our muddy Santa Fe boondocking spot 2 days late, we had a 325-mile drive to our next destination in the Texas Panhandle. Perfectly doable for a one-day weekend drive but way too far to attempt during the week.

We stopped for a night/work day at Blaze in Saddle RV park in Tucumcari, NM, a Route 66 town that still appears to be a popular one-night stopover for cross-country travelers. We finally got to Palo Duro Canyon State Park on Wednesday evening, stopping at Cadillac Ranch along the way.

We ended up being glad that our week-long reservation at Palo Duro Canyon State Park was cut short. While we had a really nice campsite and perfect weather to enjoy it, there were 3 major problems – crickets, flies, and bees. Hundreds (thousands?) of each. We could not be outside without crickets and flies landing on us. And we had to tape up the weep holes on our windows because bees were crawling through and moving in. We’ve never seen so many insects.

Palo Duro Canyon is the 2nd largest canyon in the country at 120 miles long and 6-800 feet deep, formed by the Red River ~1 million years ago. It’s an unexpected sight compared to the rest of the landscape.

On Friday afternoon we hiked to the park’s famous hoodoo called the Lighthouse.

It was way too hot during our hike but we had decided to leave Saturday morning, a day early because of a forecasted windstorm. Michael was not about to let us get stuck in another campsite and not only made us leave a day early, but also before sunrise. Yes, we towed our house up curvy steep grades out of the canyon in the dark. That’s how badly he wanted out of this spot. Wonder how long this will last.

Our next destination on our I-40 trek was Oklahoma City. We stayed at Roadrunner RV Park, in an urban area 10 minutes from downtown.

We didn’t have many expectations for OKC, but we listened to country music all week because that’s just the whole vibe, and had a great week exploring! It was a clean city with nice green spaces and revitalized areas.

We spent our weekend day at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The museum is not just about Oklahoma or cowboys but everything western – American Indians and cowboys, fine art, ranching, rodeos, western movies, etc.

The museum houses a western art icon – the End of the Trail statue (photo below). Have to admit, being from western NC, near the homeland of the Cherokee, and then seeing the Cherokee presence displaced in Oklahoma and thinking about that terrible part of our country’s history was a bit rough.

An interesting experience was watching a cattle auction in the Stockyard District. I didn’t feel comfortable taking photos inside (or making any kind of move, or else we’d be buying a cow that we definitely don’t need).

The room was like a small movie theatre with stadium seating, with maybe about 25 people buying cows. At the front of the room was a table with the auctioneer in the middle of a half circle flanked by two garage doors. Cowboys would usher in 1-10 cows at a time through one garage door and within about 5 seconds they would run around the half circle and back out another garage door while bids were being made.

Another neat OKC district is Bricktown. It’s presumably (haven’t visited yet), similar to the Riverwalk in San Antonio. There is a canal that you can walk along, or ride a boat, lined with restaurants, bars, a movie theatre, and mini golf.

We tried the beer at Bricktown Brewery and Prairie Artisan Ales in the Automobile Alley district.

We also walked around Scissortail Park and Myriad Botanical Gardens.

And last, visited the OKC Memorial, sadly what the city is probably most known for.

Our next stop is a slight detour to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas!