A Front Seat View: Kansas and Texas-Palo Duro Canyon

I’m sorry for being so delayed on my write ups of our travels. Doing more living than writing. When I last wrote we were in Missouri. We left Missouri on October 4th and started heading in a southerly direction since the long range forecasts were were for cold overnights. We could see a massive rain system hanging over the center of the country and hoped we could avoid some of it. Not to be! We drove through Kansas and the Flint Hills area, a stark beautiful grasslands. We camped over night at a Army Corps of Engineers campground on the Pomona Reservoir. We managed to set up during a break between rainstorms abut it rained all night. I had developed a cold while I was in Missouri and like most illnesses, it seemed worse at night so one night in Missouri and the night at Pomona I went to be really early in the evening. That seemed to help the cold move out of my system although it took a week to be fully gone. I felt like I couldn’t complain too much as I only get colds about once every five years so I was probably overdue for one.

The following day was again cold and rain. It was a pouring rain, not a light rainstorm. We just couldn’t seem to catch a break on the weather. The clouds were low and not moving. I just could not bear the thought of trying to set up the camper in the cold so I looked ahead and found a La Quinta in Dodge City KS. We like the La Quinta chain since they don’t charge extra for dogs. Oh HOW NICE to be tucked up warm and dry in a motel that night as I still felt a bit punky with my cold.

The following day we made a decision to forgo our reservation at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was clear that the rain in the higher elevations was turning to snow. We had hoped to see some of the National Parks in Utah such as Grand Staircase Escalante and Zion but we decided that driving through the Colorado mountains in rain turning to sleet/snow towing a trailer was foolhardy.

We also decided to buy our second car, our van, from the Chrysler lease program. We knew that would add a level of complexity and the need to be able to spend a few days somewhere where it wasn’t going to freeze at night to get a FedEx delivery of paperwork. Our need to stay above freezing came as we traveled. Although we left Michigan thinking that we might like to try “boondocking” without water and electric, we realized that we like having our own shower and bathroom facilities. And with the nightly temperatures hovering in the high to mid thirties, the heater and fan comes on frequently. If we were relying on battery power, the fan would drain the battery quickly. So all in all, with our frequent moves, we decided to head south faster, though Texas. Our next plan became Amarillo TX as there was a FedEx shipping center there. The rain continued, dreary and drenching. Again a La Quinta was available and a welcome respite.

Hurrah! The following morning was…wait for it…SUNNY! Although a bit cold and windy, I still felt a mood lift. That is until Dave came in to report that we had a flat tire on the trailer. Ah well, minor inconvenience since we had a complimentary membership in Good Sam road emergency service. So we called and the service was scheduled.

Next bad news, Dave came in and said that he couldn’t get the power jack to work. I was busy with the dogs so I didn’t got immediately to look at it but he came back to me and told me that he had pushed the button the wrong way and essentially had been trying to raise the jack instead of lowering it. So I went over to push the button to lower the jack. All of a sudden there was a horrible grinding noise and the power jack didn’t move at all. I tried calling Good Sam, but our roadside assistance only covered things that meant we couldn’t travel, not hitches frozen up. I then called an RV repair dealer. He said that he was booked up the following day, a Thursday but could probably do it on Friday. But, he said he didn’t want to mess around with warranty work, he wanted payment outright. He did say that grinding the hitch upwards when it was meant to go down would probably not be covered since that probably resulted in a shear pin breaking or gear teeth breaking which is probably what froze the hitch. So, I said that would be fine. We could take the hitch with us and try to file a claim, or more likely, just give him the hitch.

Near Amarillo is a canyon, Palo Duro Canyon. There is a Texas state campground at the bottom of the canyon. The information I found online said that the canyon is second in size only to the Grand Canyon. So, the problem became, how can we go camp in that beautiful canyon without a jack to take the camper off the vehicle? Well, the answer is, we go to Home Depot to buy a scissors jack to raise the camper off the hitch on the car. We traveled down into the canyon which was breathtakingly beautiful, sandstone colored cliffs, a Grand Canyon-like surprise since I didn’t even know that canyon existed until the previous night when I saw some tourism information at the motel. We got a site, used the scissors jack to remove the camper from the truck but realized that the scissors jack didn’t stabilize the camper very well and in my research online, we found out the corner jacks on the camper aren’t designed to take the whole weight of the camper. So, our next decision became, we needed to go back to Home Depot and buy a heavy duty bottle jack that could take the place of the power jack and hold some of the weight of the camper during the days we were camped. We did this and finally returned to the campsite (after dark), leveled and stabilized the camper and had a frozen microwaved dinner.

The next day we planned to drive the canyon road. The canyon staff had posted a sign the previous day that all the hiking trails in the canyon were closed until they dried out. The excessive rain had created clay mud and washed quite a lot of sand into the roadways, although we could see that they had cleared out the “washes” on the roadways. We stopped at a couple of the trailheads and could see no signs saying that the trails were closed and there were quite a few cars at one of the trailhead hubs. Se we concluded that they must have opened up the trails and they were dry enough to hike on. We started out on a Lighthouse Rock hike. Neither of us had hiking boots on but the trail surface seemed dry, although rocky. We hiked only about half the trail (I later saw a picture of the Lighthouse Rock and regretted that we hadn’t hiked the full way. However we really weren’t prepared for hiking, didn’t have much water with us or good boots). The air was cool and it remained cloudy but it was colorful with some of the stripes in the rock a deep cranberry red color. We walked around several folds in the sidewalls and of course took a surfeit of photos!

The following day found us up early in the morning to use the jacks to raise the camper off the bottle hitch and put it back on the truck. Not easy or straightforward because the scissors jack is on wheels and not really designed for the weight of the camper. However, the bottle jack didn’t extend a high as we needed because we hadn’t put it on many blocks to stabilize the camper. So there were a few tense moments, but in the end we succeeded and we were able to drive to the camper repair and have the jack replaced. I found out some bad news while waiting that the cold weather was expected to descend the following night, with temperatures in the 20’s. So again we decided to go further south. Our paperwork could be shipped to us in Midland TX where we would wait a few days for it to be delivered.