Day Five: Elk City, OK, to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, TX: 200 miles

 Today we drive from Elk City, OK, to Amarillo, TX, and then down to the Palo Duro Canyon, said to be the second largest canyon in the U.S. It is 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep.It was incredibly windy at the top, but fairly calm once we got down into the canyon. We were excite to be here because we have prints of artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe, who lived at Ghost Ranch and painted hundreds of pictures of Palo Duro Canyon. We're pretty sure that we recognized landmarks from some of her paintings, and we for sure saw where her "Palo Duro red" color came from. We have never seen rocks like these before!

Welcome to Palo Duro!

Mama Jane and we are in a Georgie O'Keefe picture. How did she keep the canvas from blowing away miles down into the canyon?

Lots of hiding places for the Chippy Gang and their gold

Lorien finds some shelter from the wind

A couple of mountain goats

We were starting to worry the photographers

This is exactly how a Texas canyon should look!

Near the end of the trail

We took the state park road to the very end, and stayed in a little stone cow camp cabin that had been built in the 1800s!

It didn't take us long to find the top of the Cow Camp Cabin

Arwen practices with the lariat she got at the western museum in Oklahoma City

Success!

Chippy, Lemur Lamar, Rover, and Amber catch some sun down in the canyon

Lemur enjoys the canyon view from atop the overlook