About twenty miles from Amarillo is a little town called Canyon. It got its name by being the home of Palo Duro Canyon, said to be the second largest canyon in the U.S. after Grand Canyon. I don't know if that's true, I've seen some very large canyons. In any case, Palo Duro is big and very colorful. It is 120 miles long, up to twenty miles wide, and as much as 1000 feet deep. Like other canyons, it exposes multiple layers of rock, mostly types of sandstone. There is a State Park campground at the bottom, but we parked up top, where we had full hook-ups. The drive to the bottom is pretty dicey for a big rig anyway.
The floor of the canyon supports many kinds of plant and animal life, partly because of the permanent stream that flows through it, likely the one that created the canyon through erosion. My first encounter with the beautiful Mississippi Kite was here.
Throughout the West, there are many opportunities to enjoy dinner and entertainment, usually Country and Western music. We've visited several such places, but here we tried a breakfast offered by Elkin's Ranch. It started with a 4WD trip down into the canyon on the scariest road they could find. We then had a wonderful scrambled egg breakfast, including delicious Dutch oven biscuits made by a back-woodsman named Cody, followed by the soulful songs of Ed Ford. The highlight, though, was when a woman, who pretended to be a customer, got up and shared her hilarious history of several failed marriages and other relationships.
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