Day Five (770 miles)

Today we drove, and drove, and drove.

Best line of the day:

Tim, “Ashley look out the window do you see the mountains?”

Ashley, “Do you mean those shadows?”

We left TX at 9:30 A.M. and we stopped just outside of Flagstaff at 10:20 P.M. (central time). Flagstaff is in the mountains and we had just descended to a lower elevation, so I thought the rest of the trip would be easy. Wrong again, we had to go back up into the mountains and down again to get to Phoenix. After driving 13 hours the last thing you want to do is drive through the mountains in the dark. We made it to Sun City at midnight (10:00 P.M. mountain time).

Palo Duro Canyon

Here is one of my favorite pictures.

Day Four

Last night was perfect! It was in the low 70's when we went to sleep with low humidity. I had all of the windows open so there was a great breeze, and everyone slept great. In the morning we had pancakes for breakfast.

It started to heat up early:

Q. How do you keep cool when you are camping in TX?

A. Stick your head in a bucket full of water.

The big adventure of the day was our horseback riding trip. The stable had openings at 4:00 P.M. and they told us to come 20 minutes early to get signed up. I had everyone drinking lemonade and water before we went because it was so hot, and that turned out to be a good idea. 17 of us left for the one hour ride and 7 of us came back. About 20 minutes into the ride we stopped, because a couple of the other riders were getting sick. One little girl that was there with her grandparents actually threw up on her horse, and another girl turned gray and passed out on her horse. They both had to get off of their horses. The guides said this had never happened before. One of the three guides rode off to get help, the owner/guide stayed behind to help, and the last guide took us back after about 20 just sitting in the sun.

Throughout the ride Colleen had her hands full, because her horse kept trying to leave the trail and run back to the stable. Colleen’s horse kept biting the other horses and at one point it got spooked by some people on a cliff and reared up and started to take off. One of the guides had been right behind her until we had to stop for the sick girls. August’s first horse kept backing up, but after we stopped for the heat stroking girls one of the guides switched with him. We finally made it back to the stable after an hour and a half, and everyone was toast. We went right to the car and grabbed some water, and then we hit the trading post for Gatorade. On our way back to the campsite we saw two ambulances and a fire truck. They were taking the sick girls out of the canyon. Even with everything that happened; the kids had a great time and really enjoyed horse riding.

Ashley had the best horse it followed the guide all she had to do was hang on.

Pictures

If you click on the pictures you can view them full sized.

Day Three (Continued)

As we approached Amarillo TX, we saw a storm brewing in the distance. We turned on the radio and there was a"Sever Storm" warning. We could have been headed right for the storm, because we did not know what county we were in. The storm ended up on both sides of us and we went right through the middle.

We ended up stopping in Amarillo to get gas before we went to the campground. The sun was shinning when everyone got out of the car and out of know where we were blasted with a torrential downpour. I had just started to pump the gas and I thought I could retreat under the gas station canape boy was I wrong. The rain was blowing sideways and I got soaked. The girls had just started to the bathrooms when it hit. They retreated under the canape, that didn't help so they headed for the door. Ashley's shoe flew off on the way and Colleen had to run back for it. A couple of minutes later it was over. We have never got so wet in such a short amount of time.


We did not want to go through the same trouble of finding the campground, so we left Missouri at 6:30 A.M. We ended up at Palo Duro Canyon at 6:30 P.M. with plenty of daylight. It was hard to screw this one up. There is only one road in and one place to go once you got there.







Here is a picture right ourside the campground check in.

The final leg of the trip was the decent into the canyon. There were several 10% grades and a lot of sharp turns, but it was worth it.







Palo Duro (Indian for hard wood) Canyon is the second largets canyon in the U.S. and the campgrounds are right in the middle of it. Here is a picture of our campsite.









Here is the view from the other side of our campsite.

In the next post I will tell you about horse back riding in 114 degree heat.

More Pictures

Uploading the pictures is going ok, so here are some more.

More pictures from the beach

Alexis skipping rocks

Ashley the poser

We woke up in a cloud the day we left Missouri.

Pictures

The view from our first campsite.













The rain in Missouri

Our Popup in Missouri

Finally some fun at the beach!

No Cell at the bottom of the canyon

Our campsite at Palo Duro Canyon was at the bottom of the canyon and there was no cell coverage at all.

Colleen is driving again as we head to Arizona and I am updating the Blog. I am going to try and upload some pictures now.