Copper Breaks State Park

A couple of weeks ago we took a week long trip out to west Texas! We had the best time. Our primary destination was Palo Dura Canyon State Park which is right under Amarillo. It is an 8 hour drive there so we broke the trip up to make it easier on the kids. We drove 2 hours to Dallas and spent the night with Oma and Granddad and then got up and drove 3 hours to Copper Breaks State Park. We spent one night there before leaving and driving 3 more hours to go to Palo Dura. Copper Breaks is a nice state park. It was very dry there and we were under a burning ban during most of our trip. You can see in one of the slides below how the doc has no water under it!

They had a really neat little free museum with nature samples and history of the area. I was very intrigued by the story of Cynthia Ann Parker. Comanches captured her at the age of 9, and she was raised by them. It seems like the Indians killed her family and also took her brother. I think I remember reading that her brother came down with small pox, or some sickness, as a young man and the Indians abandoned him...but one of the women stayed with him and nursed him back to health and they settled down and had a family. Don't quote me on that, but I think that is how it went.

Cynthia Ann married one of the Comanches and had three children. In 1860 some soldiers came and captured her and her baby daughter. Her baby soon died of influenza and she missed being with the Comanche people. She stopped eating and died in 1870. This is so sad to me. Her husband and one son died as well not long after she was captured. But one of her sons, Quanah Parker, later became chief of the Comanches!! I just looked her up on Wikipedia and found out more interesting info. Here is the link if anyone is interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Ann_Parker I just love Wikipedia!

Cynthia Ann nursing her baby daughter, Prarie Flower, and dressed as Comanche

Her son, Quanah Parker

Here is a slide show of some pretty scenery and the kids playing on the little playground by our camp site. One rule of camping with little ones is...camp as close as possible to the bathrooms and the playground. We saw a lot of bats flying around that evening and we heard one in the little cone shaped thing over our picnic table. It left us some lovely guano on our picnic table...no we did not eat off of it.

I will soon post about the rest of our trip!!