Summer Comes to a Close at Palo Duro

We closed our summer this year by going camping once again to Palo Duro Canyon. It's only 2 hours away and it's the best that this landscape here in West Texas offers within that time frame. It reminds me a lot of Moab, but Moab is WAY better--I'm spoiled. Palo Duro is the 2nd largest canyon in the United States (that was very surprising to me; it seems a little wimpy to me!!) and is considered the Grand Canyon of Texas. The largest canyon in the US is of course The Grand Canyon in Arizona. Overall we made a lot of memories. There were some hick-ups with "attack of the fire ants, flies, bees, and spiders," but we (or I should say I) did our (my) best to smile and laugh through it all. When we arrived at the canyon, we went to hike to a small cave and let our pet lizard Molly go where we originally found her 3 months prior. It was an exciting day for all of us--I think especially for me!! No more trips to the pet store for crickets!!! Molly was really reluctant when we first let her out. She stuck around for about 10 minutes until she finally ran off. It was as though she had gotten used to us. While she was lingering, Kelsey even caught her again which we were all very surprised and excited about. See the video below to see her in action!!

After our little hike we arrived at our campground. Originally we had reserved a more expensive campground with bathrooms within walking distance, but we decided to save $10 bucks and reserve the cheaper one instead. When we arrived at our campground to find the picnic table provided for us covered in cobwebs, I wondered if we had made the right choice. Blake went to inspect and noticed in one corner that a Black Widow resided with two newly formed eggs and other corners also had scary and ugly spiders!! He got our lighter out to torch them, but it didn't work!! Then he got out his flip flop shoe and tried swatting at them. It was pretty funny!! He got the Black Widow's eggs down, but didn't succeed in killing the Black Widow until later that night. We were never able to get the big brown ugly one on the other side. SO we stayed far far away from the picnic table which wasn't always easy to do with a little invincible 1.5 year old running around--but we succeeded! Once we were settled down, Blake went on a ride which we had planned on him doing prior to our coming. I took the girls to a playground within the canyon. We played had a good time and played until nearly dark.

By the time I got back to camp, Blake had the tent all set up and had put all of our bedding and blown up our air mattress--what a guy huh?!! We had fun making smores, but learned if you want a roasted marshmallow you have to get regular marshmallows not flavored ones--me and the girls had gotten chocolate and vanilla marshmallows, they were yummy, but wouldn't roast.

We all went to bed around the same time. We were all very tired. Blake was excited to sleep in his hammock from his boyhood he recently acquired again, but showed up in the tent with us late in the night, finding it to not be as comfortable as he remembered it being before. The girls slept soundly through the night---heaven!! We all woke up happy the next morning. Blake left for another bike ride before the rest of us got up. We all slowly woke up some time after and got breakfast. All was fine and dandy until the girls started to spill their cheerios and we had "attack of the ants" again coupled with "attack of the flies, biting horse flies, and bees". One bee was particularly attracted to Kelsey's white shirt and chased her around the campground for about 10 minutes. She was running around the campground yelling "Shoo, Shoo, Shoo!!!" I started laughing and she did too until about the 10 minute mark when she cried in tears to me, "Mom, I'm tired of running". I quickly sent her to the car. Then Mylee was dancing around the camp because she was about to wet her pants. So I loaded all the kids up in the car and drove down to the bathroom. Ahhh....no flies, no bees, no ants!!! The car was nice!!

When we got to the bathroom we had to use the men's side because the girl's bathroom floor was covered with giant fire ants and spiders were under the toilets and around the stalls. I stayed there for a while getting the girls' teeth brushed and such, monitoring the outside to make sure no males showed up to use their bathroom. When we arrived back at camp, I left the girls in the car and got their clothes from the tent. I dressed them all the in car and got them lathered in sunscreen. I then moved them all back to the tent to have them help me roll up the sleeping bags and to keep them away from the ants, flies, and bees again. As we were walking back to our tent I noticed our neighbor just coming out of her tent, she had been "sleeping" still during our whole morning brigade!! Opps!! Welcome to family life Miss! Blake arrived shortly after from his bike ride. We packed up camp and drove to a place to take a small hike with the girls.

Our hike was nice and short. We visited a replica of Charles Goodnight's dugout from the 1800's. He settled there and raised cattle for many years. We then hiked along a trail and collected leaves of different plants and talked about the different rocks found in Palo Duro Canyon. We ate lunch and then we were out of there by 11:30 AM. Our ride home was pleasant.