Palo Duro Canyon

Up north from Lubbock a bit exists Palo Duro Canyon or the "Grand Canyon of Texas". The park claims that it's the second largest canyon in the United States. It is cool but it's like the baby brother of the Grand Canyon with a depth of only 800 feet compared to GC's 6000 feet. We had planned on camping in Palo Duro this weekend but were greeted with a huge rain storm as we drove the last 5 miles to the Canyon. We decided spend the day in the Canyon anyway since we were there. It was really beautiful yesterday! The rain cleared but the clouds hung around keeping the temperatures cool. The rain also intensified all of the bright reds and golds and browns of the canyon which made every nook and cranny a sight to behold! We went on several hikes around the canyon. The longest trail we went on was called Rojo Grande which is where we found all of our mishaps for the day. It was a beautiful hike with many water crossings. The trail itself wound along side a small river most of the hike. At the first water crossing, I accidentally threw Dylan into a stream. The plan was that I would toss him as he jumped and between our two efforts Dylan would find himself safe,clean and dry on the other side. What happened was something entirely different! As we began the maneuver, I put all of my weight on my right leg and began to propel Dylan. Simultaneous with this motion, a sink hole opened up and swallowed said leg up to my knee. At this point I dropped Dylan tush first into the stream. Gravity continued it's work on me and I landed face first in the mud. Luckily no one was seriously hurt so all it was was really funny! We completely stopped worrying about getting dirty or wet for the rest of the hike which I think, made it more enjoyable. The other mishap involved Owen and a swarm of horse flies. For some reason Owen smelled really enticing to the biting flies even though Dylan and I seemed completely uninteresting to them. Poor Owen spent the hike flailing about and screaming. He occasionally would sprint ahead in an effort to stave off the swarm. Many times we could hear him up ahead yelping in the shrubs. At one point just as Dylan and I were rounding a bend after Owen had ran off once again, we came upon Owen smearing mud on his legs and arms all while screaming and jumping around like a big monkey. (Later Owen said he thought that if he had mud on him it would mask the sent of whatever was attracting the flies to him.) It was the most hilarious sight! I nearly fell down I was laughing so hard! In fact I was fighting off laughter the whole hike but tried hard not to give in so as not to further intensify Owen's plight. Owen reported that it was the most awful hiking experience of his whole life! (I feel bad that my beloveds agony was so funny to me but even as I write this, I find my self riddled with the giggles!) Despite these little setbacks, we all had really good fun with no further buggy aggravation the rest of the time we were there. We plan to try to camp there again next summer and next time make sure to armor coat Owen with bug spray!

P.S

Owen video taped Dylan explaining why the flies were attracted to Owen. I'll try to get it onto the blog sometime in the next couple of days.