Upper Midwest - Day Six (Elk City, OK - Palo Duro Canyon State Park - Phoenix, AZ)

ok ok ok, so this is going to be a really long day - winding up taking me 15 1/2 hours to cover 940 miles (including a one hour hike at the Palo Duro Canyon State Park)


I left Elk City before 7, and it was pretty cool crossing North Texas in the morning fog. I got to Palo Duro Canyon State Park!

This canyon area was where the Comanches hid out in the 1800's. In April 2012, I wrote a blog entry for "Empire of the Summer Moon"click here for blog. "The spectacular Palo Duro Canyon, carved out over the geological aeons by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, was a thousand feet deep, one hundred twenty miles long, between a half-mile and twenty miles wide, and crossed by innumerable breaks, washes, arroyos, and side canyons. This was long the Quahadis’ sanctuary"


There is cactus


crumbling rocks

and some spectacular views!!



my hike took 3.5 miles in just over an hour:

And of course there were big-horn sheep (please ignore the reflection on the glass from the diorama [ha ha])


Back up to I-10 West (also know as "the middle of nowhere")


There started to be cool mountain/rock formations


The sun started to go down as I entered Arizona

and then it set

kind of looks like a Frederic Church painting

The main reason I don't like driving in the dark is I miss the landscape! This is the route I took through Arizona's Tonto National Forest - I missed ALL THE BEAUTY in the dark!!


Thank you God for getting me through this long day.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

for this trip I am listening only to double-albums - let's see where that takes us

Leo Kottke - The Best (double album, released 1976)
various artists - the Bridge School Concerts (live recording, released 2011)
because I was listening to Willie Nelson at the Bridge School Concerts, I had to put on TEXAS MUSIC
various artists - A Taste of Texas
Lyle Lovett - Anthology
Lyle Lovett - I Love Everybody
and then because I was driving near "the Sangre de Cristo The Blood of Christ Mountains Of New Mexico", I had to listen to Paul Simon (lyric from "Hearts and Bones"
Paul Simon - Concert in Central Park (live recording, released 1991)
it was recorded Aug 15, 1991, and I remember that day/evening: all 5 Dixon's were visiting friends on Fishers Island, and Hurricane Bob was coming up the coast.