Sunday was our final day in Palo Duro Canyon. We started the day with horseback riding around the area that we hiked the first day. We were able to see Sad Monkey Mesa and the Catarina Cave system area from a different vantage point, so that was pretty cool. My horse’s name was Clifford. He was a good boy and didn’t really give me any trouble, though he didn’t look too thrilled about taking a selfie with me at the end of our ride, haha.
After our ride, we went back to camp to meet up with Dad, Chris and the kids. They didn’t ride with us because the kiddos were too young… and apparently Chris isn’t into riding horses, haha. We decided to take a drive over to the other side of the park to hike to and around The Big Cave.
The Big Cave was a short hike from the road, which was good for the kids– but this meant that it was more crowded since it was so easily accessible. The cave was really tall, but pretty shallow. Dad, Spencer, and Baillie hiked around and behind the cave and poked their heads through holes near the top.
Lorelei slept through the entire thing. She had not taken a nap yet and fell asleep pretty much as soon as I put her in the carrier and started hiking.
After The Big Cave, we went back up to the rim to the visitor’s center and museum. The museum was very informative– I wish that we would have gone there on our first day. It would have made it easier for us to answer the boys’ questions. Speaking of wishes, I really wish there was a children’s nonfiction book about Palo Duro. I bought a story book while we were there, but I really wanted a nonfiction with lots of images of the plants, animals, and an explanation of the history of the canyon. Maybe I should write one…
Once we got back to camp, we were all sitting around talking about how cool it would be to climb Sorenson Point–that cliff behind our campsite:
By this time, it was nearly 4pm, so we knew that if we were going to do it, we needed to start soon or we would run out of light. Dad, Valerie, Jim, Spencer and I packed our backpacks and hit the trail. The rest of the group stayed back at camp– in hindsight, Logan probably could have done the hike, but he was tired since it was the end of the day. Plus, having the kids along would have slowed us down significantly… and we were on a time crunch. Valerie has all of the photos of our climb. I need to get those from her. Chris kept our camera at camp so he could try to get a shot of us on the peak. He also snapped a couple of my filthy baby:
I had my phone and took a couple of photos while we were climbing.
Oh, there we are…
Can’t see us? Let’s enhance…
Ok, that’s about as good as it’s going to get. Man, I wish we had an awesome zoom lens. I’m the dot on the far left. Great photo of me! 😉
Can you believe that it only took us about 30 mins to get up there? We were hauling ass!!
It was a beautiful view. I really wanted to spend the night up there. Next time…
On the way back down, we stopped to pose for another group photo.
The next morning, we all got up early and started to tear down camp. Luckily, we remembered to get a group shot before we left. We had so much fun, we have been talking about making a Memorial Day camping trip a yearly thing– and making Jordon and Lauren come next year!
