Day Two, Highway to Hell...

Destination on day two was Palo Duro Canyon! A beautiful place we had heard all about and it was on our route so how could we not stop in for a night? This turned out to be very misguided. Texas is hot. So very very hot, and when you bury yourself in a canyon, with little to no breeze, but plenty of sunshine, in late June, in a camper van with no AC, you've
basically duplicated Hades. We tried to make the best of it and put up our little awning to shade LeTigre, but the energy it took to erect the thing under the blazing sun nearly did us in. We stayed motionless, in the shade of nearby trees,

surrounded by the beautiful, deadly canyon...

I didn't think there was a rig on earth to rival LeTigre but this thing was pretty cool.

This is an expedition vehicle from Germany traveling the globe, nice. 

It really is beautiful if you can get past the heat.

Luckily, things cooled off overnight and we actually managed to get a little sleep until... there was a thump in the night (about 3am) from the direction of our picnic table. Angie peers outside and can make out the shape of the biggest racoon on earth rummaging thru Kipper's dog food! Note to self: Don't leave Kipper's food out overnight. I go outside with
a flashlight and wave it at the racoon who reluctantly wanders into the trees. We clean up the whole mess and go back in and Racoonus Gigantus comes right back to clean up anything we missed and then saunters off to the next campsite.
It all looked very routine. We were definitely guests in his house.

OMG!!!

No cooking tonight, just basic food.

Needless to say we got up early and hit the road. We had done most of the teardown the previous evening and just had to load up and go. We had discussed a route the night before and basically the goals were:

1. Exit Texas, and 2. Elevation. Elevation. Elevation.

We love Texas, it's our home, but we couldn't get into New Mexico fast enough.

Next destination: cooler climes...