Palo Duro Canyon State Park

The Saturday before we left Amarillo, TX Chris and I decided to go to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. It was about an hour drive from our RV Park. We heard it can get really hot there. Especially at the bottom of the canyon where the temperatures can get up to 15 degrees higher.

To avoid the heat we decided to get up at 6:30 am and try to get there by 7:30. Of course that didn't happen it was more like 8:30 when we got there. We enjoyed watching the beautiful sunrise on our drive there.

The price to get in is only $5 per person and we were given a map of the trails at the pay station. Upon entering we immediately drove to the visitor center but it wasn't opened yet. We are glad we stopped because the view of the canyon from there was gorgeous.

Palo Duro Canyon is 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, with a depth of more than 800 feet. It is considered the second largest canyon in the U.S. It's kind of sad we lived in Texas all those years and had never heard of it.

From the overlook at the visitor center we started our drive down the canyon to our trail. It was a beautiful drive and you can stop and get out at some of the overlooks.

The Lighthouse Trail is the most popular trail and the full hike is 5.75 miles. There is a warning sign posted at the beginning of the trail to make sure you bring a gallon of water per person because it gets so hot. We had already read about this before so luckily we had our giant water bottles.

Chris at the start of the Lighthouse Trail

The trail was pretty flat and there were no steep inclines. The temperature wasn't too bad at the beginning either and there was a nice cool breeze. We enjoyed the scenery.

Capital Peak

a cactus that look like a heart

As we continued our hike we could see the Lighthouse Rock in the distance.

We thought we were going the right way and then we got to this end of trail marker with no sign of the Lighthouse Rock in sight. Our phones weren't working and our trail map didn't really help us figure out how to get to lighthouse rock.

Chris decided to hike up a little further but  it looked as if we had actually gotten further away from the rock. It was at this time the giant horse flies started biting us. If you start to sweat and stand still too long they will get you. They are HUGE.

It was also starting to get hot by this point and we decided to hike back. These are our best pictures with Lighthouse Rock.

We felt like boobs. We were disappointed but still enjoyed the beautiful hike back.

We decided this was a house with a chimney

Chris liked this little seahorse. We might have been delirious.

It really did get really hot by the time we were leaving.  The hike probably took us about 3 hours or so.

If you have been on the Lighthouse Trail feel free to tell us what we did wrong. haha