Second day at Caprock Canyons

                                              Thy fate is the common fate of all; 
                                              Into each life some rain must fall. 
                                                   -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh, the agonies of the night. Of course I had trouble going to sleep. It wasn't Zack this time, it was my usual first night syndrome, plus the air coming in the windows. It was too warm to shut them, but an occasional chilly blast crept under the covers and made me cringe. I lay awake listening to nothing--man, it was dead quiet!  It's never that quiet back home.  Back in our swampland home, with the windows open, it's downright noisy. We're surrounded by frogs and other creaky things, never an absolute absence of noise.

To the west there were occasional flashes of lightning. Since there was no rain in the forecast, I assumed it was scattered showers in the far distance. After a long while the flashes were showing in the east-facing windows too. And then...rain.

Pelts of rain, and for a good long while. Zack woke to the racket and started to wimper. After a few minutes, I told him to, "Come in here and go to sleep." He'd gone to sleep in the living room, alongside Izzy, and I guess he didn't realize where we'd gone. So he moved into the bedroom and found a nest on my blanket which had fallen to the floor, then moaned no more.  Snored a little, maybe.

The rain bothered me until I got up to check the windows, and sure enough, it was raining in the east windows. I closed them and went back to bed, waking each time a shower started and then dozing back to sleep. Suddenly a light flashed on overhead and I opened my eyes. Ed had woken up, sweating hot and forgetting where he was--he'd reached up and accidentally hit the light switch. Remember, we're sleeping on a raised platform under an overhead shelf with recessed reading lights mounted under it--we can reach straight up and hit the switches without even stretching out our arm. If we sit straight up, we bash our heads on the shelf. But only once. Per trip.

He'd turned the light on accidentally.  I muttered that he could open the window--I'd closed it because it was raining in. He did so and peace returned.

The morning greeted us with a strong, cold wind and a blanket of dark clouds. Hiking around was pretty much out of the picture--when I took the dogs for their morning walk, well past dawn, the prairie dogs were still in bed.  Wished I were too.

So it became a driving day. We drove to the scenic overlook at the Wild Horse Camping area--what  a majestic canyon! Driving down into it was marvelous. Lake Theo was sweet and looked eminently fishable although the only birds I saw were cliff swallows or rough-winged swallows, killdeer, a flock of four small waterbirds, a sandpiper-like bird at the side of the water, and an huge roadrunner. It was too cold and windy to consider fishing.








We drove around some more and looked for the bird blind but never found it. We found the buffalo--

                              in their garden--













Then it was a choice between doing more scenic driving and going back to hibernate, so we drove out to view Palo Duro Canyon from Highway 207 between Claude and Silverton.  It's an interesting drive--the land is mostly flat and nearly treeless except when you come into a town--and there aren't many of those. The highways are straight for long stretches, have wide shoulders, and a 75 mph speed limit. You could safely go faster but we were in no hurry. We turned on 207 and headed north on the long, straight road, went over a slight rise, and then it dropped off in front of us into a huge, wide landscape of broken rock, deep red pillars with crumbling white caps, wild wastelands--but dotted throughout with pale mesquite and dark green juniper....


At the bottom the road crossed the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River and Tule Creek--I don't recall ever seeing the river but to the west it had been dammed to create a large lake.  And two minutes later the road climbed out of the canyon and returned to flat prairie, with no sign of the rugged landscape behind.



We did get out of the car and walk around a little at the lake, but it wasn't a pleasant time. Still cold and very windy, but the clouds kept trying to break up and expose a little sunshine. Not much sunshine but it cheered the spirit.

When we returned to camp the wind was a tiny bit calmer, so we walked out (the short way) to see burrowing owl again. Same one?  It seemed smaller than before.















Then Izzy and I took a longer walk along the road, down into the canyon. We were only halfway or less down when I looked behind us and decided that the climb back up from there would be adequate exercise for the day.  What a wimp!

No birds until we got back and found a quail crossing our backyard, west to east. A male bobwhite--I guess I can no longer say, "I'm not sure I ever saw one." Later I watched cottontails hopping around, and just before dark a deer came cruising through, east to west. Changing of the guard?

We dined sumptuously on salad, baked potato and grilled veggies by Ed. He had steak, of course, but I'd had enough meat for a month on this trip already--especially since we're still hoping to do ourselves a Korean barbeque this trip.

About the Wifi--at some point during the day I fired up my computer to make notes. Out of habit more than anything else I clicked on the 'show available networks' icon, and saw one labeled TPWD-GUEST. Unsecured. I connected and okayed the Terms of Service and found I had faster internet service than I do at home. Cool!  Later I picked up a brochure and found that a number of Texas state parks have it. I'd not seen it on any website.