The Lee Family: Hiking to the Lighthouse

We planned to have a very full first day at Palo Duro Canyon that started off by waking up at 6am to watch the sunrise! However, we all ended up sleeping in until 8:30am, which actually felt terrific! When we finally got up and dressed, Sofia was excited to eat her first bowl of oatmeal in her life! Olivia, much like myself, was not very excited. When I was on the bike trip across America, as well as all other bike trips I took in middle school, we had oatmeal each morning for breakfast. I honestly don't think I've eaten it since. I didn't mind it then, but just had too much of it all in a short span of time. I boiled water in the microwave and used our new enamel cups to make the oatmeal for each of us. I did bring maple syrup, honey, coconut, blueberries and bananas that we could add to our oatmeal. It actually ended up being pretty decent! However, Sofia wasn't in love with it like she thought she would be, and said it was "ok". I know exactly what she means! I also had a cup of instant coffee which was pretty terrible. Oh, how I wish I had my Nespresso maker! However, the view was amazing! I don't think I could ever get used to the incredible view of the canyon.

We finished our oatmeal, although I'm not sure Olivia ate anything. We were actually dressed and ready to go by 9:30, which was faster than I thought we could get ready. We'd decided to hike to the Lighthouse, which is the canyon's landmark rock formation which can't be seen from anywhere other than getting there by foot or bike. The total hike is 6 miles round trip, and I was excited to do a real hike together. We drove to the lighthouse trailhead and started out at 9:45am, which could have been earlier since I know it would be hot hiking in the afternoon. We made and packed up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (I made peanut butter, honey and banana for myself), Fritos, granola bars, nuts, an apple, tangerines, chocolate chip cookies that CK made for us before we left, and a bag of gummy bears. We also had six full water bottles, knowing we would need every drop.

Of course, we took pictures by the trailhead, and I reminded the girls that they had to smile for every picture I took of them! The trail is very well marked and there are markers indicating every .1 mile, which was helpful. The first 11/2 mile we hiked the girls were happy and talkative. They played a make-believe game that they have played before where Olivia is a black lab named Ash and Sofia is a desert scout (a mixture of animals) named Riv. Both Ash and Riv have pet dragons that have names, etc. They spent their time hiking making up elaborate stories of their activities, favorite foods, their pets' activities etc. It was so cute. Shortly after the 1.5 mile marker, Olivia hit a wall and wanted to take a break every 2 minutes. Basically every spot of shade she wanted to stop and sit down, which significantly slowed our progress. So, I opened up the Gummy Bears and promised her two every 1/10 of a mile. It worked like a charm! At the 2 mile marker, we took celebratory pictures, knowing that we were not too far from reaching our goal. We finally made it to the 2.7 marker, where there was a picnic table set in the shade. We sat down and ate our lunch and cookies, which was really the break we needed. We took our time and relaxed for a bit before we decided to press on. The last mile or so we could see Lighthouse in the distance, but once we reached the picnic table, we couldn't see it, but knew it was right behind us. A couple came down from the far end of the trail and told us it was a difficult climb up to the Lighthouse, but well worth it! So, off we went. We actually had a hard time even figuring out where the trail officially led, but we made it up despite the steep incline and rocky trail. Sofia stopped on the way up for a potty break and ended up putting her hand directly on a cactus! Thankfully I had my Swiss Army knife which has a set of tweezers that proved extremely useful to cactus spike removal!

We finally made it up to the top and couldn't believe the view! The view of the canyon as well as the Lighthouse was absolutely amazing! The girls were so excited to have made it and ran up to the Lighthouse, where they could carefully climb up to the ledge between the Lighthouse and the other rock formation directly behind it. It was super cool, although the girls wanted to hike further and make it to the top (or near the top) of the second rock formation. I wasn't super comfortable with that, so I convinced them that we'd made it as far as we could and we needed to hang out and enjoy where we were before heading back. We would have a significant walk ahead of us.

We hung out for a while and then headed back. It was a tough climb down, but we made it back to the picnic table and started toward our car, roughly 3 miles away. It was starting to get hot, but was still not too bad out. As we started walking, Sofia was done walking, but thankfully Olivia was in a good mood. At least they took turns running out of energy and not wanting to walk. As I tried to convince Sofia to walk and have a better mood, I told the girls about my mom's family stories about "just suck a rock" when things become tough on a hike. They thought it was great! I also told Sofia that I was just a bit older than her when I rode my bike across America and all we had was 3 short miles in front of us. She asked me how in the world I rode so far and I told her "One mile at a time, just like this hike." That really seemed to help her and we walked the last two miles with everyone in a good mood. The girls wanted to hold hands while we walked, which was fun but also a little tight on the trail at times. We also took turns playing "scenarios" which is basically a chose-your-own-adventure game Sofia made up a few weeks ago. They love playing it and it seemed to really help as we walked. The last 1.5 miles were the toughest since it was very exposed to the sun and wasn't as interesting as most of the trail. We started seeing people on mountain bikes heading toward the Lighthouse, and joked about how much fun it would be to borrow their bikes and ride back to our car!

We actually ran out of water just before we reached the end of the trail. Just in time! We got back to our car at 2:30pm, so 6 miles took us just shy of 5 hours! I was so proud of the girls for making the hike and having a decent attitude for most of it! We were SO glad to be back in the air conditioning of the car and headed to the Trading Post for ice cream (for them) and iced tea (for me). It was very refreshing! As soon as the girls had some ice cream in them, they wanted to go climb around in the cave. They love it so much and I couldn't imagine how they had so much energy to hike so soon after hiking 6 miles. So we went back to the cave and I hung out at the base while the girls literally climbed all over inside and out. I kept thinking I could have used that energy from them on the hike! I let them play for 45 minutes then we headed to the cabin. I was so sleepy and thought I'd take a nice nap after we returned to the cabin, but couldn't fall asleep.

We took turns taking our shower, and again I didn't get push back from the girls to shower! One perk to hiking 6 miles in the heat and dirt! After showers I made our dinner for the night, which was bbq chicken cutlet, zucchini, onions, and corn in foil packets cooked on the park stove. It ended up being really tasty. After we had s'mores and the girls may have had three of them!! I just wanted to use up the food that we had. We hung out and read until it was dark at 9:30pm, much later than at home. Thought I'd sleep like a baby but Sofia came into the room saying that she kept hearing a mouse or something making noises by her head and wanted to sleep with Olivia. So, I moved to the twin bed while the girls cuddled up in the queen bed together. They were asleep very quickly. Meanwhile, there was most certainly a mouse that I heard by my head or over by the table that held our food. It was pretty unsettling. I used my headlamp to read my book "Empire of the Summer Moon". I'm not a huge history reader but the book is fantastic and so hard to put down. I used my headlamp to try to catch the mouse, but never saw anything. I finally fell asleep and woke up in the middle in the night to a crazy storm with lots of rain and thunder and lightening. Of course, the girls slept like babies.

Wake up, sleepyheads!