I will not be able to make my annual migratory 4th of July trip home this summer.

July 4th being on a Wednesday, combined with little vacation time and high fuel prices are keeping me and the rib in Houston.

I always bring my mountain bike and go to the canyon. I remember the rare years it rained this much and I'm wondering if the canyon is just full of green. I'll bet it is.

Just wanting an update, or even pictures. I miss PDC so much.

Haven't been to the park, but the pastures have been really green and the wildflowers have been blooming. It's getting hotter and drier, it's going to get brown soon if we don't get a little more rain.

Wheat harvest is about to really get going.

I'll tell you next month.

I was there a couple of weeks ago. It was really green. First time I've ever been to the Panhandle and seen wildflowers in the pastures.

It's looking great!

It's been looking pretty good. Plenty of wildflowers, prettiest I've seen it.

I don't know how accurate it is, but I've been told that Amarillo was named that (Spanish for yellow) because of the plentiful numbers of wildflowers in the spring.

If that is true, then we know it must have been a wet spring that year. Otherwise, Amarillo would be named for the Spanish word for brown.

This last two years we have had exceptionally wet springs. And the fields have been covered with yellow flowers.

I think there were droughts in the late 1890s, but when the first settlers came through in the 1880s to early 1890s, this part of Texas was in a wet cycle. They thought it has paradise.

About the same thing happened from about 1910 to the late 1920s. Really wet weather and good crop prices lead to a huge influx of settlers.

[This message has been edited by cwarren04 (edited 7/6/2007 12:49p).]

A nice little piece by Dan Flores about the canyon in this month's Texas Monthly

LINK

I agree with Mr. Flores. By all rights, PDC and the adjacent canyons should have been part of the national park system. Or at least, a national monument.

I'm thinking about doing a 50k trail run there in late October.

PD is one of my favorite places on earth.

I'm looking to enter the 20K, myself.

Canyon99:

Are they advertising it much up there? I found out about it through a trail runners listerv. Just curious because I noticed on their website that they were capping the 20K run at 200 runners. You might want to go ahead and register if that's the case.

I was on the PDC website a couple of weeks ago and stumbled upon the race information. I have not seen any advertising but it could be due to the fact that I'm either at the office or my house about 99% of the time.

Gotcha. I think I'm going to try my hand at the 50k. 50 miles is just a tad too long.

I'll start another thread or bump this one up when the date gets closer. Maybe we can meet up for a beer afterwards or something.