Almost Home

On our last night camping we stayed at Lake Arrowhead State Park which is a few hours outside of Dallas. By this time, I was getting rather sick of camping and sleeping in the tent! I was so looking forward to coming home. We took a different route back and I really enjoyed driving through some old towns that I had never seen before. I loved seeing all the wildflowers along the side of the road. Then we drove to Justin's sister's house to visit with her and her family for a few hours. It was good to see them. Then we drove back to Oma and Granddands in Dallas to spend the night again with them. As much fun as we had on the trip, it was so good to sleep in a bed!





James and cousin Max!









After we left Oma and Granddads we were on our way home and Justin just did not want our trip to end so we stopped at one of his old childhood haunts called Samuel Farms. I had never been there before and it was so much fun! It is farm outside of Dallas where people go to have picnics, fish, hike etc. They have old tractors and barns all over the place and beautiful flowers planted everywhere. I went a little crazy with the picture taking! Here are some of my favorites!!!

Caprock Canyons State Park

On our way back home we drove through Caprock Canyons State Park to see what it was like. It was not too far from Palo Duro. The scenery looked very similar to Palo Duro. They had a buffalo heard there that a man named Charles Goodnight donated to the state of Texas back in the 1920s. These are supposed to be the closest bloodline to the original buffalo that originally roamed in Texas way back when. They also had a neat nature center for kids with a really nice park ranger lady that showed us around. It looks like it would be a neat place to camp. They actually have a place to swim there, where palo duro did not. It also looked like a great place to go bike riding. It also had a nice play area.

Palo Duro Canyon Part 2

I'm finally getting around to telling you about the rest of our trip!! We had such a wonderful time just walking along the trails in the canyon. We felt like explorers seeing all these new sights. Driving through the canyon we passed what looked like a large opening to a cave...well that could not be passed up, so we stopped the car and Justin just had to walk up to it to get a closer look. So he took Callie with him and I stayed with the boys. Several minutes later, I look up at the cave and I see that Justin and Callie had climbed up to the opening of the cave. I was in shock! I quickly grabbed the camera and tried to take a picture put it was so far away it did not come out too well. You can't tell from the picture but this is a pretty steep climb. When they got back they were so excited that they had climbed up there ,but thankfully he was not about to go inside because it looked too dangerous. Then James begged to go so Justin took him up there too. What a great adventure!

Before and after
the climb!























There was a nice little museum there that had an observation deck. It showed fossils as well as all the animals and plants found in the canyon. There was a lady there showing a real live owl to a group of school children. It had a room there showing how the CCC put down the road into the canyon and built the State park back in the 1930s.


I really enjoyed all the wildlife in the canyon. There were tons of turkey and deer that would just walk right up to us at our camp site wanting to be fed. Someone said that a coyote had walked through our campsite right before we got there! We also saw a lot of brown rabbits running across the road and tons of beautiful birds. We are studying birds right now so it was very thrilling seeing some that don't frequent our area.


We met some interesting people there at the campsite. There were several there from Canada who said they always came down south for the winter. One lady said that her relatives called and said the snow had melted and spring had come so she could come home now! HA! After we told her we were a homeschooling family, she said her grandchildren were home schooled too! I always love to hear about homeschoolers from other countries. I know it is illegal in some places. How sad!


Here is a slide show...it was hard picking from the over 600 pictures we took on our trip. We all love to take pictures so I think we overkill a bit but it is so much fun!!! Digital cameras are awesome!