When it's too windy . . .

We had only planned to stay at Caprock Canyons State Park for two nights. But when the weather forecast predicted 30 mph winds from the west with gusts up to 50, we decided to stay a third night. Driving a motor home with strong side winds is no fun, and we are driving further than usual each moving day in our journey south. So it is nice to have the flexibility to stay put and "enjoy" the winds here at Caprock Canyons. We took a picture of one of the sturdy caprocks, protecting its mound of red dirt that would melt away quickly without that cap.

We intended to make the short hike to see the natural bridge on the Eagle Point Trail. But we hiked right over that bridge and found ourselves about a mile past it before we decided to turn around and try again. Oops! We found it on the way back. In the picture below, you can barely see Denisa's silhouette in the light under the bridge.

It looks like much of the ceiling of the natural bridge has collapsed, and it was tricky getting through it. That's probably why the signs we were looking for are no longer on the trail.

The 30 mph winds did show up today, and we decided to drive the car to explore our surroundings. The little town just south of the park is Quitaque, Texas. Like you, we had no idea how to pronounce it. This must be a common problem, as the people that live here have placed large signs on all sides of town that explain it is pronounced <Kitty-quay>.

We drove 6 miles south of town to Monks' Crossing, a trail head of the Caprock Canyons Trailway. We're fans of rail-to-trail paths, that are relatively level trails because they used to host railroad tracks. We can tell that this is a trail-less-traveled, as we had to struggle riding over the bumpy mounds of grass growing up through it.

The good news is that much of this section of the trail is down below earthen walls. This protected us from the strong winds on both sides, as shown in the picture above. But when we got to the unprotected bridges, we could feel the full force of today's stiff winds. Just like driving a motor home, riding a bike is tough in winds like this.

So we rode just long enough to get to the bridge over Los Lingos Creek. It's the longest train trestle of this 64-mile trail that makes its way across the plains of the Texas panhandle.

On the way back into the state park, we found more of the bison herd on the road. They were also congregating by the park lake, which had white caps from the waves kicked up by the wind.

We don't know if it was the wind, but something had stirred up the bison herd. We watched as two different groups were dueling it out. We couldn't help but notice that they both are holding their tails in the question mark pose that we talked about yesterday. The park brochure pointed out that was a sure sign of an agitated bison.

So even on this windy day, we found things to do, and got some good exercise. One other side benefit of the wind is that the dirt suspended in the air on a windy day can make for a beautiful sunset. We took this picture from our campground as the winds continued to blow. It's been a good stay at Caprock Canyons State Park, even if its sometimes windy here!