When I was younger, I had my fair share of family vacations– snow skiing trips, Disney Land, World, New Mexico. Some were closer to home with other families like the Bishops like Six Flags or Wet N’ Wild (Hurricane Harbor). In retrospect, some of my favorite trips were the ones we took within Texas. In the summer of 1989, when I was eight years old, my family, brother, mother, and father (my sister wasn’t born yet), loaded up in our Astro Mini Van and headed to Canyon, Texas, 25 miles outside of Amarillo. The point of the trip was to watch one of “the world’s most popular outdoor musical dramas ” TEXAS,” and to take the Palo Duro Canyon tour.

The Canyon Tour

Palo Duro Canyon State Park , located outside the main city of Canyon, Texas, and considered to be “the Grand Canyon of Texas” opened to the public in July 1934. It contains 26,275 acres is 120 miles long and is as much as 20 miles wide. With a maximum depth of 800 feet, its elevation at the highest point is 3,500 feet above sea level. Some say Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States. The largest, the Grand Canyon, is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep.

The actual tour was breath taking. We surmounted the rocky terrain rode in one of those 30 – 50 tourist mobiles driven and narrated by our guide. He pointed out some memorable scenes and rock formations, but I was more excited about the roadrunners and lizards I saw for the first time. After the tour, and while awaiting the performance we spent time in the gift shop where my father let me buy my first pocket knife. I still have it.

TEXAS – The Musical

After the tour we watched, TEXAS, the musical. After the popularity of Oklahoma!, the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein which was later made into a motion picture in the 1950s, it seems Texans felt they needed a musical too. TEXAS was born and the musical drama, as they call it, has been performed since the early 1960s. The play reminded of another I had seen three years earlier celebrating the sesquicentennial of Texas, 150 years of statehood. The most memorable part in my eight-year old mind was when simulated lightening struck the amphitheater’s rim. My father told me they probably used dynamite. It rattled my little body, and I felt a little sick the rest of the show. I am sure I would appreciate live special effects more now, much like the live Batman show at Six Flags.

On the way back from Canyon, we stopped alongside the historic Route 66 in Armadillo to see the Cadillac Ranch – an artist’s commentary on the US’s Golden Age. Ten Cadillac shells with body styles from 1949 through 1963 stand nose first in a field for spectators to admire. The cars are completely graffitied, but it is still amazing, especially for an eight year old. In 1997, they had to be moved two miles west due to progress and development. That trip to Palo Duro Canyon was definitely not the last family trip, but it was a memorable one. Texas has its attractions and its oddities, which makes me proud to live here.