Camping and hiking Palo Duro Canyon State Park, TX

On the drive from Dallas to Denver, I took a break by camping at the Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Canyon, near Amarillo TX. Another great experience!

There are several campgrounds in the park, all located on the floor of the canyon. The ranger station at the park entrance was closed by the time I arrived at 4:30pm. Fortunately I had pre-registered and printed the permit to put on Millie's dash. I stopped by the visitor center which had an interpretative exhibit and windows to view the canyon walls and floor below. The drive down the 10% grade switchbacks may be harrowing for some big rigs, but not an issue for Millie. The decision to select the Juniper Campground was spot on: although located near the end of the park road, the 18 sites were more widely spaced and private than the other campgrounds. There were modern restrooms and showers (4th photo below) in the campground.

It was cloudy, cold and very windy that evening, so I cooked dinner on the induction stove top, showered and chilled in Millie (i.e. hand quilted while listening to a new audio book). The next morning was still cold and windy but the sun was out. I decided to do some hiking. There were trails for hiking, horseback riding and mountain biking, some trails were multi-use. The two trails I hiked (Juniper Riverside and Juniper Cliffside) were not very well marked, with mulitple entry points. I suppose this made them interesting to explore, although I would hate to be lost amongst the divergent paths since there was zero cell signal in the park (at least for Verizon). The Cliffside trail was the more interesting of the two, I followed hiking paths towards the red cliffs with white bands in the distance. As I got closer, it appeared that there was a path to climb up to a big cave near the top of the cliffs. The views from the approach and within the cave were amazing.

I hiked for almost 3 hours, checked out a couple of other trails, before calling it a day. It rained during the night, and got pretty cold the morning of my departure. I was afraid that the park road may be icy which would make going up the steep turns interesting. But it turned out fine, was probably too dry for water to accumulate. I drove around the park, stopped at the trading post, checked out the other campgrounds (campsites in Sage Bush and Hackleberry were closer together compared to Juniper) and trail heads located along the way. There were some dire warnings about heat stroke, etc. on the more difficult sites. I wish I could spend another day to hike a few of those trails. Maybe another time, definitely not summer though. Millie had no problem getting up the canyon road to the park exit. Found a McDonald's in the town of Canyon nearby and was able to get cell signal after two days offline. The rest of the drive to Denver was uneventul.