Arizona 2024: Day 7: Palo Duro Canyon State Park: Cave Dwelling

Lovely night sleep. Furnace kept us toasty while it dropped below zero C outside. I turned on the tank heaters around 0530 for a bit but that was probably not needed. I headed out for the morning walk towards the big cave. Ambient temperature was -1 C. It’s a combo of short stints on various trails to get to the cave. I am pretty sure I took every wrong turn. I used to think I had a good sense of navigation, maybe now that I electronics to take the planning and awareness out of it, I have lost what skills I had. Or, maybe I just never had them. I arrived at the big cave and picked a path up. Relying on my skills I went left to avoid the rubble field. Imagine my surprise when I ended up above the cave looking down into it. Well, it was a nice scramble up the cliff. Going up was fairly fast and easy, going down, not so much.

Back to the van we go. This time with fewer wrong turns.

After breakfast we headed back up to the top of the canyon to get our permit for a new site. Surprise, we had booked site 81, but they had us in 83. No big deal, at least we got our own big rock and a beautiful view.

We did a bunch of relaxing. Temperature was acceptable in the sun. Mrs Milddogs and Amy headed out for a walk over to one of the hills. While they were climbing it I was thinking how cool it would be to take a 360 degree pano of the area. Then I remembered I have a 360 camera. So I took some shots.

After lunch we headed out so Mrs Milddogs and Amy could hike to and into the cave. For some reason Mrs Milddogs did not trust my navigation skills, but having made all of the errors earlier in the morning I guided us there efficiently. There were far more people than in the early morning. We made it up the rubble field, had a look around and headed back to the van. Again, navigation was perfect – perhaps because Amy knew the way and lead us back.

By dinner time the campground began to fill up with new arrivals and people that had been out for the day returning. People in Texas seem to not care about walking right through your campsite. Maybe I should wear spurs and a hat?

Shower time was equally pleasant/unpleasant. At least I had figured out the combination to warm water!

Quote of the day was father to son: “Don’t hit my telescope with that hammer!” Note that it was the same father that kept walking through other peoples campsite. Maybe I had a slight hope little Tyler would exercise his constitutionally guaranteed right to introduce hammer to telescope. It’s in some amendment, isn’t it? Every citizen shall have the right to bear hammers for the sole purpose of imposing said hammer’s force upon the looking glass of the citizen’s parent or parent like person provided said parent or parent like person has been wandering into other people’s property, wether permanent or temporary, beer in hand, chasing the citizen around.

Dinner was roast beef fried in garlic (grown in our own garden) served on naan with tomatoes and a caesar salad on the side. Mmmm. We used up our last mustard package we got at Buc-ee’s. We shall probably hit the HEB tomorrow.

Had to take the garbage over to the dumpster. That included the Bud Light box. I’m brave, but not Bud Light case in a full campground in Texas brave. So I inverted the cardboard and strolled over to the dumpster looking as innocent as possible.

Sunset gave new light to the nearby rock walls.