Deep in the Heart of Texas

The stars at night
Are big and bright
Deep in the heart of Texas

The prairie sky
Is wide and high
Deep in the heart of Texas

Gene Autry

After a month long hiatus, the Traveler Blues van is on the road again traveling thru west Texas on our way to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. The bluebonnets are blooming and there are miles and miles of sunshine, prairie sky and wide open grassland. You never know what you might come across in west Texas. Even old farm equipment starts to look like a piece of sculpture.

Originally, we were hoping to make it to Caprock Canyon State Park, outside of Lubbock, but we got a late start out of Austin. We always set a departure time, but if a flight isn’t involved, rest assured, we will be late. So we had to stop for the evening at Abilene State Park. The Civilian Conservation Corps did much of the original work associated with the park. It is a nice little park where you can pitch your own tent, drive your camping rig in, rent a cabin, or rent a yurt! That’s right, they have yurts for rent.

Douglas insisted on stopping in Turkey. Why would you want to stop for lunch in Turkey, Tx? Well, straight from Douglas’s keyboard, “On Sunday mornings, I like to watch CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley, then turn to my favorite PBS car show, Autoweek, and then comes the Texas Parks and Wildlife show where you will always learn something about the state’s parks and wildlife. After that, comes on the Texas Daytripper https://thedaytripper.com/. And last weekend’s show just so happens to have the wacky host, Chet, and his crew visiting Turkey, Texas and the Bison at Caprock Canyon State Park. It was like a ‘sign.’ Sometimes you just have to go with the sign.”

Turkey, Texas’ biggest claim to fame is that Bob Wills http://bobwills.com/ grew up there and was a town barber before fame came his way with the invention of Texas Swing and his bandmates, the Texas Playboys. To this day, the town holds a big weekend bash the last weekend of April to celebrate the man, the band, and the music. There is also a nice Bob Wills museum there as well.

Our first camping destination was Caprock Canyons State Park located in the Texas Panhandle, home of the official Bison Herd for the State of Texas. At one time, 30-60 million bison roamed the North American plains. Between 1874-1878, professional hide hunters slaughtered millions of bison. By 1888, there were only 1,000 head of bison left in North America. A local rancher’s wife, Mary Ann Goodnight urged her husband to capture the orphaned calves and raise them at their JA Ranch and the herd grew to about 200. The descendants of these orphans now constitute the 100 bison roaming in Caprock Canyons today. We were cautioned not to get closer than 50ft to the bison but they freely roamed in our campground and hogged the road too. Folks interchange the word buffalo & bison but only bison are native to North America. Buffalo live in Africa & Asia.

This campground would make a great 3 day weekend destination with 90 miles of trails & canyons + Lake Theo to explore. Canyon Rim trail is a 6 mile roundtrip hike or bike trail near our Honea Flat campsite. We did a little of both with our bikes!