Amarillo - Lubbock

Friday 12 October – Amarillo – Lubbock

Today we drove parts of the Texas Plains Trail. The northern part of Texas is called the Panhandle and that is where we were. “The stars at night are big and bright ……” and that is especially true about the Panhandle but we have had cloudy weather since we arrived in Texas and tonight there is a tornado alert in the western part of Texas and a severe thunderstorm warning for Lubbock.

From Amarillo we drove to Canyon and the Palo Duro Canyon State Park – said to be the most beautiful in Texas. It features some majestic scenery and we drove through the floor of the canyon 1000 feet lower than the table-top expanse of the Texas High Plains. A branch of the Red River has carved out the valley. Went to a bird hide and managed to shoot a male and female Cardinal. 

We then drove to Claude and south to Silverton. We passed over the plains, and they are as flat. This is a huge farming area – maize and acres and acres of cotton. We again passed through the Palo Duro Canyon before reaching Lake Mackenzie. While we were at Lake Mackenzie a flock of geese flew overhead.

Our next stop was Quitaque. Just outside this town is the Caprock Canyon State Park. Again this canyon was created by the down-cutting action of the Little Red River. The exposed layers are often referred to as “red beds” because of the red colouration of the stones and rocks.

The park is the home to the Texas State Bison Herd.  As we entered, I asked the ranger where the herd was and he told us so we drove there and sure enough we found the herd of buffalo with many baby buffalo.

This area was the home of the Apache people until 1700’s when the Comanche and Kiowa pushed them out.  These people were pushed out of their homes and onto reservations in the 1870’s.

Our goal for the day was to reach Lubbock, so we set out and thanks to “Karen”, our GPS, we found the shortest route.

Just past Floydada, we saw pumpkins in the fields and then saw this barn with pumpkins all along the driveway. In we went!!! We ended up meeting the owner and he must have every type of pumpkin ever developed on show in the shop. People were all buying ready for Halloween.