Palo Duro Canyon State Park

After a great night's sleep we watched the first quarter moon come up over the mountain outside our camp.  After a shower we had three hen and a tom turkey near our campsite.

After breakfast we went for a hike before it got too hot.  There are lots of birds around our camp and we have 25 boys and girls from the Duram School that are camped next door.  This is a field trip for them and I talked to their teacher who says she does this every year for her class.  They teach the kids about the environments, science, history, geology and even math.  They apparently have races and they have to measure the distances and do some calculations. 

The hike was uneventful.  We saw the Goodnight Dugout near camp along the Prairie Dog branch of the Red River.  This is a small stream about 5 or 6 feet wide, swift and red.  After lunch we drove up to the Visitor's Center and found a copy of Roadside Geology of Texas.

We then drove into Canyon to McDonalds for wi fi which was a bust.  We decided to drive to Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument. This was a great location. We met Warner Schmitz the ranger and chatted about the Harry Yount award for park rangers.  He was very familiar with this award. Harry Yount is a shirt tail cousin of Hardy and was the first park ranger in Yellowstone Park. This was prompted by Hardy's spotting "Blood and Thounder" on the shelf.  The ranger was very informative about the history of the quarry which has been a flint quarry for approximately 10,000 years.  The original "Clovis Point" is Alibates flint.  The quarry is named for Allie Bates, an area rancher.  Unfortunately the guided tour was closed so we could not go up to the site.

After we came back to Palo Duro we drove up the canyon and checked out the other campgrounds.  The Cow Camp Cabins were cute and a possibility if we come this way again.  We saw more turkey and four deer.  A man from Dallas stopped to talk to us and wait for the deer to cross the road and he had just seen another 4 foot Diamond Back crossing the road.