It was a beautiful day to travel.  I went up to St. Barnabas early (7:30am) to sell some Eagle camp mugs to some of the Scouts and leaders of Troop 445 who were leaving that morning for summer camp at Bear Creek Scout Reservation.

The Philmont participants were supposed to begin arriving at the church at 8:00am, but some started showing up at 7:45am.  The parking lot began getting full really fast, but emptied quickly as the 445 summer camp Scouts left at 8:00am.  Since we had packed as much as we could in the Troop trailers the night before, there was little to do in the way of packing, just one or two backpacks and a few odds and ends.  Jody Woods led a small chapel service at 8:15am in the parking lot, followed by picture time for each crew and for the contingent as a whole.  We loaded up into the vehicles (a rented 15-passenger van, my conversion van, Glenn’s Tahoe, Jan’s truck pulling a trailer, Elmer’s Jimmy pulling a trailer, and David & Jill Burt in a personal vehicle) and drove out of the St. Barnabas parking lot at 8:34am.

We had the normal “big group” drive with the usual long stops for gas and restrooms.  We stopped for our sack lunches at a roadside picnic area on US-287 past Vernon, Texas.

We arrived at Palo Duro Canyon State Park around 4:30pm.  What a beautiful place.  It looks just like the scenery out of old western movies.  The canyon walls were spectacular.  We set up camp in short order, and then a game of Frisbee broke out in high winds.  We left our campsites to go to the outdoor amphitheater at 6:00pm for the barbeque dinner and Texas  musical play.  The barbeque dinner was pretty good – chopped brisket, cole slaw, potato salad, bread, peach cobbler, and lemonade.  After dinner we strolled through the gift shop and sat around the “courtyard” listening to a guitar/fiddle duet play old and new country favorites.  The highlight of the courtyard concert was some of our guys performing in the chicken dance.

The theater gates opened a little before 8:00pm, and we went down to our seats.  By the time the play started, the temperature had cooled down nicely.  The Texas play was great, from the cast, to the music, to the special effects, to the stage – including 800-foot high canyon walls.  The lighting of the canyon was awesome.  The play ended just before 11:00pm.  We went back to the campsites and hit the sack fairly quickly.  It was a great first day.