Trekin' with the Cartwrights: Thursday in Palo Duro Canyon

Since we found out how hot it got in the canyon as the day progressed, we decided that we would get up early on Thursday morning and try to go for a hike before it got too hot. Tabitha kindly got us up just before 6am (I am sure it was because she knew we wanted to get up early and had *nothing* to do with delivery of her food!)... and we got going.

I had studied the list of trails and decided that I would like to try the "Lighthouse" trail - to see the "iconic" rock formation of the canyon - it was listed as a "moderate" trail and almost 3 miles one way, but we decided to give it a try.

Information at the trail head

Lighthouse Trail
Caution this trail is responsible for the most heat-related injuries and deaths to people and pets in the park.
This trail is 2 3/4 miles long, or 5 1/2 miles round trip.
The trail is open to hikers, mountain bikers and equestrians.

We got started on the trail a little before 7am. It was cool and comfortable (probably about 70F).

The trail had some deep ruts in it, I think possibly because of it being used by mountain bikes?

I had seen a post card of the lighthouse rocks and wondered if this odd formation was it... but no...

Beautiful rock formations all along...

We both had our hats on! (You'll have to trust me on my hat as no pictures show it - but Dwayne's light cowboy hat shows up nicely!)

Can you see the moon? Just a tiny white half circle in the sky...

About 1.25 miles in, we came to a viewpoint of the Lighthouse...

I zoomed in with the camera, but we decided that was as close as we needed to get to it...

We got to enjoy more of the scenery on our way out...

So beautiful!

Loveliness all around us!

The day was warming up too.

We were glad we decided to turn back when we did.

When we got to the parking lot for the trail head (before 7am) we were the only car there. Another vehicle came as we were heading onto the trail, and the couple who had arrived in that vehicle passed us on the trail soon after we started hiking. We had not seen anyone else on the trail until we turned back... and then we saw several groups of hikers - we could see that they were impressed that we had already done the hike and were on our way back to the parking lot! (We confessed to a set of 2 couples who appeared to be about our age that we only went 1.25 miles in and that there was a good view from there, which seemed to give them confidence to continue that far in!)

We got back to the parking lot at about 8:40am, and it was starting to get pretty warm (mid 80s) by then. More cars were coming into the lot as we pulled out, and we were very glad that we had started as early as we had.

I had noticed that one of the signposts at the overlook had indicated that the Lighthouse was visible from there, but we weren't sure what we were looking for then, so we headed back to the overlook.

It was clearer on Thursday than it had been on Wednesday (or maybe because we were there earlier in the day).

This showed the various things that were visible from the overlook - and the rightmost item was "Lighthouse"...

Is it there?

Zoom in a little...

Use Dwayne's camera's super long lens!

Yes! There it is!

From this vantage point, we could also see a couple of rock formations listed as "Spanish Skirts".

Zooming in on one of them...

And then on the other one...

Beautiful!

The views were wonderful!

We headed on up to the Ranger Station - I had booked our reservation as two separate 1-night bookings (that's all I could get booked online - I got Wednesday night booked, and reserved our tickets for the "Texas" show, but kept on looking for a campsite to be available on Thursday, and eventually found one available!). Since it was booked that way, we had to go back up to re-check in - we were allowed to stay in the same site, and only needed to go up in the Jeep, could leave Miss Doozie at the campsite.

Information about the JA Ranch

There was another overlook a little further down from the one with the information sign about what we were seeing - so we stopped there on our way back down to the campground.