For the past 3 years we have spent the coldest of the winter months on South Padre Island in Texas. This year we are heading to Arizona. We had decided we wanted to try someplace different, and as it turned out, we would have been forced to anyway. The county park that we’ve stayed at…

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Today felt very much like a Kansas road trip as we made our way from Wichita to Liberal. We started out the day with meeting Lisa’s friend, Martie, in Newton for breakfast at Curtis C’s Diner. After a good traditional cafe breakfast we hit the road. The winds were still strong today, but not nearly…

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This morning we took a three-hour drive south of Liberal, Kansas. It was another windy day, but driving was great when heading due south with a tailwind. The roadside grasses were full of cotton pieces from the cotton harvest as we crossed the Oklahoma panhandle into Texas. The terrain in Texas changes into scrubby hills…

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With just one short hike under our belts for this trip, we decided to tackle a big one here in Palo Duro Canyon — the Lighthouse. This is a beloved rock formation that is featured on their maps and is used to symbolize the park. The hike is a moderate one until the end when…

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We went on a couple of more hikes on our second day at Palo Duro State Park. The Big Cave is a featured spot on the trail map. It’s really a percolation cave where water has found a way through softer rock, so there is a hole in the cave roof. We accessed this from…

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Harvest Hosts provided a wonderful spot for our first night in New Mexico. Enchantment Vineyards has several menu items to go with their wine and beer selections. We enjoyed a goat cheese with berries and honey glaze appetizer and a red pepper bisque in a bread bowl to go with our drinks. We would highly…

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Pecan Harvest/Cell Tower Tree We passed several pecan orchards on our way to Alamogordo, New Mexico. The harvesters have circulating brushes that sweep up the pecans on the ground and create small dust clouds that are visible from a distance. A quick Google search told us the NM is the number one state for growing…

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Birthday Hike For his birthday hike, Tony chose a trail behind the science museum to walk among the murder plants that grow on the slopes of the Sacramento Mountains east of town. This is a trail that is clearly marked for the first half mile, then not so much after that. We had a map…

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We said goodbye to Alamogordo this morning, but not before helping the KOA staff gather up some of the 900+ luminary sacks they had put out for Christmas Eve. It was a nice morning and we wanted to stretch our legs some before our relatively short drive (134 miles) to Rockhound State Park south of…

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When Rockhound State Park opened in 1966, it was the first US park to allow collection of rocks and minerals for personal use. It still does today. Visitors are allowed to keep 15 pounds each. Lisa found a few interesting rocks yesterday along the trail. We saw a more serious rockhound quite a ways off…

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