I was on my way to Amarillo and didn’t have too much time to spend here. Furthermore, I travel by myself and am overly cautious. For those reasons, I just took a driving tour and got out of my car only a few times for photos. If you don’t have much time, you can just drive through the canyon in as little as 45 minutes.

The driving tour and roads in the canyon make up about 16 miles. There is a welcome center and gift shop shortly after you enter the park, which gives you a nice view of the whole place and is great for picture taking. To enter the bottom of the canyon, you need to drive really slowly and descend down this very steep, winding road. It is a little scary, but doesn’t last long. I can’t imagine how they handle it in the winter.

Once you’re in the canyon, you follow the main road all of the way around. It will fork at one point, giving you the option of driving the ALT 5 road. I was a little confused here, but I followed the main road, which ended up running into ALT 5. Alt 5 loops around and brings you back to the main road where you can drive back out of the canyon.

Along the way you will get many different views of the canyon. There are easy spots along the road to pull off for photos. It is filled with lots of wildlife, different trees, wildflowers, and grasses. The rocks are enormous and are various shapes. They call one of them a Mexican dress because of the multitude of colors and the shape of the rock looks like a skirt.

The park has many places to camp, picnic, bike, and hike. There is a store for gasoline and other essentials inside the park. Also, I have heard great things about the amphitheater performances, but didn’t see one. Horseback riding is also available. Before arriving, keep in mind recent and future rainfall. There are six river crossings on the main road that are easily subject to flash flooding. We hadn’t had much rain recently and I had to cross over water.

For only 45 minutes, this was a beautiful trip. The colors were amazing and I would suggest you go on a sunny day if possible. The red rocks are breathtaking and it was amazing to see these rock formations.