Day 34: Even the statues: Caprock Canyon State Park, Quitaque, TX

It’s still pronounced “Kitty Quay”.

Today we stayed put, relatively.

I failed to post a picture of yesterday’s awesome campsite.

I started the day by sleeping in a lot. Well, the time change helps a bit. None of my normal wakeful period between 0300 and 0500. Today it was straight through until 0615 when I woke up to find the furnace not working. Solution: power cord was dislodged from the power post. Furnace on, back to sleep and did not get out of bed until 0900. Yay! But good thing we are not on a schedule today.

My morning walk was spectacular. I’ve been mostly doing shorter than normal walks due to time constraints. But today I walked over to the Eagle Peak trail and walked that trail. Twice, as it is not a loop. It’s about 1.5 km from our campsite. I saw a smaller trail on All Trails (app) behind the park amphitheater. So I tried it first. It was a little sketchy as I slid along the edge of the abyss so I turned around after a few hundred meters. I then proceeded to the Eagle Peak trail. It was generally in good shape with a fair amount of elevation gain / loss. The landscape and geology were really cool. There is a feature called the “natural bridge” that I walked right past (over) on my way out. I got the end of the trail wondering where the bridge went. Time to turn around and head home. This time I found the bridge and climbed down to the passage below.

I got back to the van at about 1100 after 8.15 km. 1200 is check out. We didn’t really have to check out but we did have to change sites. We packed up just enough and went out seeking bison. We stopped at the north? trail head for Eagle Peak Trail and went for a walk down it to the natural bridge. Amy enjoyed smelling the coyote and bison poo. She was mostly interested in the coyote poo. Mrs Milddogs enjoyed the rock formations. The gypsum veins (correct term?) form mega geodes that collapse in places. Walking on the intact ones sounds a bit hollow.

Post hike we drove around seeking bison. We failed to locate them. We went to the office and did the paperwork to change sites. We arrived at our new site just after 1230. It’s not as superb as the pervious one but it is acceptable.

Mrs Milddogs offered a lunch of huevos rancheros. Yes, please.

Shower time. I give it a 3/10. Pretty grubby in there but there was plenty of hot water. Nice, long shower.

We just hung out in the afternoon relaxing in mostly quiet.

We got a new neighbour and we have been playing the “what’s the story there?” game. She enjoys a loud voice. The male that we think is visiting from another site gets to speak occasionally. If you would like to know any details of her life, let me know.

Dinner was a Moroccan stew courtesy of Mrs Milddogs. Failed to take pictures and we ate fairly quickly so we could go on a bison drive.

Success! We saw a mother and her yearling twins (no pictures) right near our campground. Further driving brought us to a bunch more. This fellow enjoyed hanging out by the road.

The neighbour across the street was telling us the siding on his RV was blowing off on his drive to the campground yesterday. He spent some time screwing it back on today.

Tomorrow is a relatively long driving day as we are targeting Tulsa, OK. Probably Cracker Barrel. I think I will do the Canyon Rim trail before we go. We won’t be sleeping in until 0900. Looks like the weather window is pretty good (temperatures) for the duration of our journey.

This park is a keeper.

Out!

No bonus map as we didn’t really move.