Tag Archives: vacation

Museums/Events, Parks, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Museums, a storm, and Palo Duro take 2!

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Being in an rv during storms is all at once beautiful(I love the sound on the roof) and terrifying.  A big storm rolled through during our stay at the Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. We drove into Amarillo on our second day in Texas to check out the Don Harrington Discovery Center.

It was another ATSC Passport museum so we got in for free again! It was a great museum but my pictures are a bit deceptive.

It was VERY crowded.

There were several school groups there and it was not a huge place so it was SUPER LOUD! I went in with our four oldest and Nick stayed out with the dog and our youngest who needed a nap. Anyone else feel like they need to go be in the middle of nowhere around no people after visiting a children’s museum? Afterwards I dropped Nick and the girls off at the camper and took the boys to the Palo Duro Canyon to hike and take pics.But because it had rained the night before, they closed the trails!

Our campsite was a good 30mins away so I felt obligated to still go even though I did still have to pay the entrance fee.

At this point it was getting laughably ridiculous.1st they are all booked up, now we cannot even go for a hike there!We still went into the museum and stopped at the lookouts at least.Our last trip to the canyon went a lot better though for sure.When we got back to the wildlife refuge we decided to check out some of the trails.It was a pretty walk.

I had to keep reminding myself that I really did love the Palo Duro Canyon and that this time it was just a flop.

Have you ever had a really bad time at a great place?

Camping, Hiking, Museums/Events, My Family, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Camping in Texas, CHANGE OF PLANS!

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We needed a stop on our way to the Palo Duro Canyon from the Cibola National Forest so we stopped at the Mesalands Community College’s Dinosaur Museum. It was a pretty small museum and did not look like much from the outside.

I was glad that the twins stayed with Nick and went to find a park while I only paid for 3 kids to go in.

HA It ended up being really interesting though and the boys really enjoyed the exhibits. Little Bit loved looking for touchable exhibits and had a lot of fun looking for the blue handprints that let you know you can touch things!

Next stop (we thought) was the Palo Duro Canyon!

We were getting there mid week in May so we thought we should be able to get a site for a night or two.

I was wrong…

They were having an event and all their sites were booked!

I had no clue where we were going to stay that night, we loved the Palo Duro so much the last time we came that I made sure we went through there on our way home so we could stop again!

In a panic I started looking for somewhere to stay that hopefully was not an RV park(I don’t like how close together most of the spots are) and found Buffalo Lake  National Wildlife Refuge.

We decided to check it out and found beautiful open sites and hardly any people! The best part though was it was totally free with our National Park Pass! It is really cheap even without the pass but free was nice. We did not see as much wildlife as at previous refuges we had stopped at but it was still very pretty. There is not a lake anymore, I guess it was not safe so they drained it.

The only downside to this beautiful spot was the vault toilets which were pretty bad but doable.

Our black tank got damaged getting to our last boondocking spot so we could not use the rv toilet.
After backpacking with Nick and having no toilet though I am pretty thankful for anything with a door.

We stayed two nights here and got to explore a local museum(free again!) and we did get to check out the Palo Duro Canyon but it turned out to be another fail.

HA

I will share why in the next post!

It was just a good lesson in not judging a place because of a bad visit!

Camping, Hiking

Camping on the Rio Grande

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I was pretty disappointed after visiting the Upper Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument that we were not camping up there.

I just could not figure out how to fit it in this trip.I had planned on us heading south to a campground that I only knew about from some references on google maps.

After looking into it more I realized it was also a part of Rio Grande Del Norte, it was just the lower part!

It was called Pillar campground and had water and electric hookups!

We had not had either of those for 3 nights so it was a nice change.

It was not as pretty as the ones in the upper part but it was still a nice surprise.

While staying there we drove on a crazy “road” up to the Gorge Bridge.

It was pretty but there were a lot of people and not really my cup of tea.

My friend actually stayed the night at the rest stop there and talks more about it in her post!

We also went for this hike on the La Vista Verde trail on our way back to our campsite and it was so pretty. I was not ready to leave this area at all and wanted to stay longer but we only had two weeks so we started heading further south the next day and got to see one of the main things I went to see.