Palo Duro Canyon State Park

In early September, we camped at the Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo, TX. Neither of us had ever heard of it even though we both lived in Texas years ago. Seems like a well kept Texas secret since no one we have mentioned it to since our stay has heard of it either.

Promoted as the second largest canyon in the United States, it offers a surprIsing vista of rugged moutains and valleys after driving through the flat land leading up to it. If you get a chance to visit, do. It is well worth the trip - just make sure you have enough gas to get down into the canyon and back out.

When we arrive at a new campground, we usually like to choose our own campsite to do some campfire strategizing (which often doesn’t work out like we expected anyway, but we always hope for the best). In the case of the canyon, we had to leave the selection up to the park staff. I was told the Mesquite campground near the end of the eight-mile road down into the canyon would offer us the best night sky view. We are suckers for a great night sky view, so I took the site.

Once registration was complete, the staff person handed me the usual papers - maps, receipt, and a slip of paper that he said contained the code to get back into the park after hours. I scooped up everything and headed out to our truck.

Once inside the truck, as Pat drove us down into the canyon, I looked over the papers. I noticed other bits of information written on the code paper. One sentence near the bottom stood out to me. It read “Fire danger is high take precautions.”

“Listen to this, Pat,” and I read the sentence to him. “What do you think they mean by precautions?”

Pat shrugged.

“Maybe it will mean no fires. Wouldn’t that be great?” I said.

And then I began to wonder why the staff person hadn’t pointed out this information to me. Shouldn’t he have at least told me what the precautions were?

When we arrived at our campsite, we were pleasantly surprised. The sites are nicely spaced and placed in such a way as to make you feel more secluded than most we have visited. We scoped out the other campers as we drove in to see if we could spot any obvious firestarters (we think we can pick them out by now and sometimes we are right...).

Then as night fell, a group of three men in three separate trucks pulled into the campsite across from us. Firestarters, we both surmised with frustration. They had no tent or camper, just air mattresses in the back of their pickups. They fit the bill.

Sure enough, within about an hour of their arrival, they started a fire, the only one in the campground. Luck was on our side this time, though - they knew how to start a fire that produced very little smoke, and we were upwind of it. We didn’t smell the fire at all. We went back to our stargazing with relief and watched the nearly full moon rise over a ridge. Magical.

We even dared to sleep with our windows open that night. In the wee hours of the morning I awoke to one whiff of wood smoke floating through the open window by our bed. And then it was gone.

My research of the Palo Duro Canyon shows it has been threatened by and damaged by wildfire several times during this decade. One fire that burned 16 acres was started by a backpacker’s campstove. Given the history, wouldn’t it make sense for the Texas caretakers of this amazing state treasure to do more to protect it than place a fairly generic warning with no details at the bottom of an unrelated piece of paper?