Caprock Canyons State Park
Winter Migration Road Trip, Day 6 | Wichita Mountains, OK to Caprock Canyons State Park, TX | Hiking & Camping in Caprock Canyons State Park | November 2023
As you may recall, this past spring we completed our goal of visiting all 50 states together. When reminiscing about the things we’ve done in each state, we came to realize that since getting married, we haven’t really done anything in Texas besides driving through the state, and we hadn’t even spent a night there. (Technically we’ve done both of these together while on youth group trips in high school, but we don’t really count things prior to marriage in our travel metrics.) So our goal for this road trip was to actually do something and find somewhere to camp overnight. I found a couple of state parks that were in the pan handle and in counties we hadn’t visited yet, so we planned our route around one of them.
After waking up in Wichita Mountains in OK, we got back on the road, heading West on US-62. We entered Texas (for the first time since May of 2015, and therefore resetting the clock on visiting all 50 States to February 2016) and took TX-256 West to TX-70, then TX-86 to our destination of Caprock Canyons State Park. Much of the drive was on empty roads, passing by recently harvested cotton fields; the remaining cotton looked like snow lining the highway.
When we arrived at Caprock Canyons, Curtis went in to the visitor center to pay the fee and come up with a plan for our time here. The ranger gave several ideas for hikes, and he learned that camping fees were actually pretty reasonable in case we decided to just stay here. At the start of the day, we had been planning on continuing further West after hiking here and camping near the border with New Mexico, but now the idea of being done driving for the day sounded pretty appealing.
We started our time here with the main hike the ranger recommended, the Caprock Canyon Rim Trail, which started at the Honey Flat Campground. The trail started with passing through a large prairie dog pasture — they weren’t happy to see us walking with Charlotte, but Char paid no attention to their cries as she happily trotted down the trail. The trail was wide, flat, and easy, with several overlooks out towards the red canyon walls, and definitely felt like a welcome back to the Southwest. After a mile and a half of following the Rim Trail, we took another trail back to the trailhead, making this a 2.5 mile loop. If you’re interested, here is our AllTrails recording.
Once we returned to the van, we agreed that we wanted to stay here for the night instead of driving further so that we could enjoy the park some more. We went back to the visitor center and paid for a site at the South Prong Trailhead. This area has primitive walk-in sites, but you’re also allowed to pay for a site and then sleep in your vehicle in the designated parking spot, which is cheaper (and much quieter) than camping in the main campground.
We drove down into the canyon, all the way to our campground which was at the end of the road. We had some snacks and relaxed here for a while, then Curtis went out on a hike on his own on the Upper South Prong Trail, which started right next to the campground. The trail follows one of the headwaters of the Red River (of the South) at the base of tall red cliffs. The cliffs form a wall that goes almost due North through the center of the Pan Handle separating the Staked Plains (or Llano Estacado), from the Western tributaries of the Mississippi.
The trail is rated as challenging only because of the end where it becomes more rugged and gains lots of elevation, which is why it wasn’t recommended to us, but Curtis thought that the part that he hiked was much more scenic and enjoyable than the Rim Trail. So after walking a mile and a half, he returned and said we should check it out some more, so Charlotte and I joined him for a late afternoon pre-sunset walk. Sure enough, being right next to the canyon walls as opposed to being above them and looking down looked much more impressive. (Here is the trail recording for the part that Curtis hiked first)
After our walk, we had dinner and watched the colors of the canyon walls change as the sun set below the other side. We settled in for the night, thankfully not as cold as the last night had been in Oklahoma.
The next morning, we were met with bright canyon walls as the sun rose, and a great view of the full moon setting behind them. We had breakfast, and then drove to the Northern trailhead for Eagle Point Trail. The ranger had recommended we hike this to see the natural bridge, but unfortunately we didn’t think it lived up to the hype — it was a situation similar to the natural bridge in Ha Ha Tonka State Park, where we knew it was nearby and were waiting to come around a corner and see it, only to realize that we were walking over it and there wasn’t an easy/safe way to see it without doing some off trail scrambling. I guess that means our favorite hike here was the one that wasn’t recommended to us! Besides the minor disappointment, we were satisfied that we had done the two things we hoped to accomplish in Texas: we visited a scenic place, did some hiking, and spent a night here. With that, we decided to call it good, start our drive for the day, and leave Texas.
