Palo Duro Canyon State Park

(Amarillo, TX)  Hi 90  LO 60 – The “can’t miss” sight in the Amarillo area is the Palo Duro Canyon State Park, so that’s where we headed today. On the way out this morning we stopped at the Big Texan Steak Ranch for our second visit, this time for their breakfast buffet. With full stomachs, we headed south on I-27 about 20 miles to Canyon, TX, and then 15 miles east on TX Route 217 to the entrance to the park. To give you an idea of how amazing the place is, here’s a photo I took out our windshield about five miles from the park. (Be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them.)


Not much to look at, right? In fact, there’s NOTHING to look at! But in just five short miles,  here’s the view that greeted us at the Park Visitors Center overlook.


Palo Duro Canyon is called “The Grand Canyon of Texas.” At 120 miles in length and 800 feet deep it’s second only to the Grand Canyon in size. The State Park only covers a small portion of it, with a nice paved 20-mile road that winds down to the bottom. We spent a little time at the Visitors Center before heading down into the canyon.


Here’s the overlook.


Inside the Visitors Center were some exhibits explaining the history of the canyon. There also many samples of rocks and minerals, along with stone tools and arrowheads from back when Apache and Commanche Indians lived in the area. There were also several windows looking out on the beautiful scenery. Dee remembered to bring our binoculars this time, and they really came in handy.


Here’s some more views from the Visitors Center.


The most famous rock formation in the park is “The Lighthouse.” You can see it just above the center in this photo. The more square formation just left of center is called “The Castle.”


I cropped the above photo to give you a closer look at the two formations.


It was time to head down to the bottom of the canyon. It was another one of those times when we went “ooh” and “aah” around every bend. No commentary is necessary, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.












Hope you’re not bored… here’s some more…










We both loved this mountain with a large cave opening. If we were about 30 years younger we would have climbed up to check it out. :)


Check out the colors on this… we were amazed at all the shades of red and purple!


Dee called this the “bar stool” rock.


By now we’d reached the bottom of the canyon.


There’s the rim, way up there!








Notice the line of cave openings in the rock.




By now we were near the top. Notice the RV making his way up the road.


In all it took us about two hours to drive the 20-mile loop. We just kept stopping to marvel at the breathtaking views. It still amazes us that you can't even tell the canyon is there until you drive right up to it, just like the Grand Canyon. What a great thrill today was!

We got home just ahead of a vicious thunderstorm that came through our area. Very heavy rain and wind pounded us for about a half hour, and our home was really rocking! We’re glad we went to the canyon today because the road in the park probably would have been washed out from the rain if we went tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be our last day in Amarillo, so we’ll stay in and start preparations for our move on Wednesday to Oklahoma City. I hope you enjoyed coming along with us today to Palo Duro Canyon State Park.