Tag Archives: Palo Duro Canyon

The Road to Diamond, Day 364: A Lone Star Northwest Passage

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving, Travel

November 26, 2025, Grapevine, TX- I had breakfast this morning at a new spot on Amarillo’s 6th Street “Fun Zone”: Coffee Fixx. It has superb coffee, and it is the first place I’ve been to in a while that offers Red Hots as a breakfast meat option. For those who wonder, Red Hots are Texas-sized sausage links that have a good, spicy kick. They are a notch above the hot Italian sausage to which I have become accustomed in Prescott.

From Coffee Fixx, I headed down along what I call Texas’ Northwest Passage- a road, or network of roads, from Dallas-Fort Worth to Amarillo and points north and west. It has been my go-to alternative to flying, when the weather is fine, as it is right now. I will depend on the Northwest Passage (US Hwy 287 and Texas Highway 114), when it comes time to bring what is left of my household from Prescott to Plano, in the not-too-distant future.

The Passage has some neat canyons along the way: Palo Duro, which I’ve visited a few times and Caprock, which is actually several canyons, set aside as a State Park, in much the same manner as Palo Duro. Here are a few scenes that presented themselves to me, on the north side of Caprock, this morning.

North side of Caprock (Above, and next few frames)

After viewing Caprock’s features from a Picnic Area, I passed through the Passage’s small, but thriving towns: Childress, Quanah, Chillicothe (struggling, but finding its way back, nicely), Vernon, Iowa Park, and the largest of the region’s cities: Wichita Falls.

After purchasing a gift item for my little family, at Valley Pecans, in Chillicothe, I waited for a lady to get out of the car next to Sportage, then began to back up. I saw a rear door open in a car that was across the way, but whose occupants would have to cross my path to get to the store. A little boy got out, then got back in, then got out again. All the while, I sat there, waiting. When he saw me, he decided to head into the store. Given that he was alone in the car, I’d say that was a good decision he made. In any case, I was not about to move the car until the coast was clear.

After Wichita Falls came Henrietta, Bowie, Alvord, Decatur, Rhome and Roanoke, before Southlake and Grapevine appeared. The near towns of the Passage are becoming exurban, but they still have the feel of independence and newness about them.

In time, the Lone Star Northwest Passage will become as familiar to me as are the Arizona Outback routes to Las Vegas and southern California, the “Lonely Road” from Las Vegas to Reno and the Red Road from Flagstaff to Cortez and Durango. Its communities will be filled with people I consider friends and its sights will be the stuff of the back yard.

Caprock is a good name for one of its signature canyons.

The Joy of Colours

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Posted by on in children, Hiking and Nature, Personal Values, Social

July 2, 2023- Two little girls offered commentary, during last night’s early fireworks display. They were most interested in the colours shown by each burst-even noting that the “weeping” item was silver droplets, gently falling. By the time the grand finale had finished, they had tallied twenty-five combinations of green, purple, orange, red, yellow and blue. Their correct summation was that there was a lot of “rainbow stuff”. There were only a few elements that had silver or gold, but that was okay with the kids.

It is a source of joy to me, to see colours in just about anything I encounter-whether in an urban environment, (Thank God for murals, which mainly add luster to a given neighbourhood), or in the glories of nature. The hues could be several shades of green forest, or miles of red rock or, as in the Grand Canyon, a riot of primary colours- from the ancient dark browns of earliest Earth to the iron-flecked top layers of the canyon rims. There have been times when eerie mists rose up from the Hassayampa River, southwest of here, as I hiked in a riparian preserve, several years back or a dazzling, flashing set of several colours appeared to me as I sat at Shalako, a site at the bottom of Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon, a year after Penny passed on. (No, I was not on hallucinogens!)

I am partial to blue, when it comes to choice of clothing, but have been more eclectic, in that regard, this past decade or so. Being required to wear only dark blue polo shirts when I worked for an inventory service, some fifteen years ago, helped bring about a wider palette. When it comes to living creatures-from flowers to animals, I have no set preferences: The wider the variety of colours, the better. Likewise, in the matter of human beings: What will it ever matter, as to the colour of epidermis, eyes or hair?

I take full delight, in the visual wealth we are proffered by the Divine.

Ad Intensium

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Posted by on in Assistance, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual

January 10, 2021-

(The above is my own coinage, meaning continuously building in strength or force.)

The cold continues, leaving mornings here, in the Teens

and brings snow to the Texas Prairie,

even to the Piney Woods to its east.

The obfuscation continues,

taking advantage of a quiet weekend,

and foretelling extralegal events,

over the next two weeks,

with a surety born of either

delusion, or collusion.

I sit here, in my cozy home,

getting residual chills,

from memories of last Sunday night,

when I walked in the vastness

of a majestic, but nearly frozen,

wilderness.

I read of another soul’s

peregrinations,

in Sedona and near Hopiland,

and recall my having been

greeted,

by spirit lights,

nine years ago,

in a place named

Shalako,

at the bottom of

Palo Duro Canyon,

and not too long after,

in the bed of the Hassayampa River.

I see and feel

the days and weeks to come,

ad intensium.

The Road to 65, Mile 358: Positivity Outside

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Spiritual

November 21, 2015, Prescott- I looked, to no avail, for a parking spot near the point where I left off on Prescott Circle, last Saturday.  I have an ethic about such things:  Never park on a business lot, unless patronizing said business.  So, the second half of Segment 7 will wait until after Thanksgiving, most likely until the afternoon of December 6.

That bit of irrelevance aside, the outdoors, as is well known to my readers, is a huge part of my life.  Positivity arises from the mountains, the desert, the beaches, the grasslands and the serene forests.  Even the ocean has given me a sense of serenity.

Sedona’s red rocks and pine forests abound in good vibrations, as do “our own” forests, lakes and grasslands, around Prescott and vicinity. The vortices of Sedona are closely matched by Thumb Butte.

I have felt similar vibrations elsewhere:  At Indian Gardens, along the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail; at both Spirit (“Devil’s”) Tower and Medicine Wheel, in northeast Wyoming; at Cahokia Mounds and at the Cairo Confluence, in southern Illinois; at Palo Duro Canyon, in northwest Texas; at Cape Flattery, Washington (the northwestern-most point in the contiguous United States; atop Harney Peak, South Dakota; at several points along Waikiki Beach, Hawai’i; and at more places than I can count, in southeast Alaska.  Then, too, Spirit knows no boundaries:  Stanley Park, Vancouver, the woods of Metz and Le Donjon, Rouen, France, held me in rapt respect.

The wind spoke to me, while on the ocean between Honolulu and San Diego and the rock along the River Trail glowed, in multicolours, when I first visited Palo Duro.  Spiders rode the breeze, on their webs, at Cathedral Rock, Sedona and spun exquisite places of rest in Olustee State Park, Florida, while I watched, in wonder.

There will, no doubt, be other encounters on the road ahead.  Nature eternally urges us onward.

The Road to 65, Mile 277: Every New Beginning…..

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

August 31, 2015, Prescott- I almost used the byline, The Universe.  I have begun reading “Way of the Peaceful Warrior”, Dan Millman’s 1980 book which loosely describes his inner journey to a higher functioning self, using the anthropomorphoses of  Agape and Eros, a spirit guide named Socrates and a whimsical, attractive spirit named Joy.

Like Dan, I have spent a lot of my life following the Prescribed Path- following, first, a maudlin, alcohol-and-marijuana-fueled series of efforts at fitting my square peg into society’s round hole.  When I was 25,  I encountered an eleven-year-old boy named Mickey, who got me to quit smoking dope; in exchange for which, he gave up smoking tobacco.  Five years later, I met Penny, my own spiritual guide, who became my wife, and alcohol was cast aside.  At age 58, after a roiling series of life setbacks, I gave up credit cards- and the habit I had developed of blaming others for our family’s ill fortune.  At age 60,  I saw my wife, my Heaven-on-Earth, transition into the spirit who guides me, day by day, no longer kept prisoner in a body that had been failing.

I have experienced beings, and phenomena, that are not easily explained in human terms:  My maternal grandmother’s spirit visiting me, early one morning, when I was ten; my father’s angry spirit pushing my head into a tile wall, in response to a wayward thought I had, about a year after his passing; Penny’s spirit filling our bedroom, as her body lay dying in a hospice, ten miles away; a bright, multi-coloured light flashing frenetically, at a spot called Sipapu (Emergence Place), on the floor of Palo Duro Canyon, as I sat on a nearby bench; my maternal grandfather’s spirit, regarding me with a stern eye, when I stopped shy of climbing to the top ledge of Cathedral Rock, in Sedona.  These are experiences that many would regard as hallucinations, but they all occurred during daylight, when I was awake, and I haven’t used mind-altering substances since 1981.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.  So goes a line from the song, “Closing Time”, by SemiSonic.  I see this, in terms of each day, week, month and year.  I have seen my own transition from married caretaker to wandering widower.  Now I am becoming a solitary seedsower, concentrating on helping to build a community. There will be other transitions ahead; other tides, rolling in, rolling out.