32 degrees to 100 degrees in 24 hoursMar 7, 2012
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On the road to Big Bend--entering the end of the world?
this is the end of the world....I can feel it!
Scenic Home sites available at the end of the world!
| March 7 BIG BEND NAT’L PARK At our Marfa location, I had noticed a different sound when Biggie flushed the toilet in the middle of the night. I just figured that he didn’t hold the lever long enough, but when I flushed in the morning, what I noticed was that we had no water! The spigot had frozen! Wow. We had camped at colder temperatures in a few places with no trouble. This was a less than wonderful place, but considering that all reservations had been made by internet, sometimes with little info, this was the first ‘less than good’ place we had been. The water did come on once the sun hit the spigot and it warmed up a bit, but it was discomforting. We had the fastest, earliest departure of our trip so far: on the road by 9:00 am. No reason to stay in Marfa any longer. The drive to Big Bend really did seem to take forever, even though it was only 110 miles. Several times on this trip I have mistakenly thought I had found the end of the world, but now I know I have. There is NOTHING out here for miles. It has been quite windy, which is typical for spring here, and the temps today reached 100 where we were hiking. Ugh. I don’t care if it is dry heat, it is still heat!! The park is 3 very different areas—the Chisos Mountains (“enchanted”), the desert, and the “river”. I am putting river in quotes because they have had an extreme drought for 18 months, and the river is running about 10-30 cfs. There are no rafting trips going, and only 2 canoe trips—one in the State Park, and one in a short area in the National Park. They are calling these trips “canoe assisted hiking” trips. I had really wanted to float through Santa Elena Canyon—that was a ‘must’ for me. Bummer. The first day here, an afternoon really, we drove through some of the areas to reconnoiter. The humidity was extremely low (red flag day), to the point that it made everything look sharper than crystal—almost painful to look at. The next day we hiked the Lost Mine Trail in the Chisos—incredibly windy, had lunch at the Chisos Lodge, and drove to the east end of the park to see the Rio Grande visitor’s center, and walk through the Boquillas Canyon. The river at this point was about 18’ wide, and a very weird color. Nothing ‘grand’ about this river. Before we walked the Boquillas Canyon, we drove through a picnic area where we saw a small roadrunner. Got lots of pictures of it. Biggie hiked up to a very exposed overlook (300’ straight down)—I had no interest in that!—and then we walked into the canyon. Ever since 9/11, it has been illegal for the Mexicans who live right across the river from the visitor’s center (and hundreds of miles from anything on their side) to cross over. They still do, and could be arrested it caught, and they leave these little displays of things for tourists to take and make a donation. Then they have to come over again to see if anyone took or donated. Our hike in the canyon was really neat, but kind of creepy since we were the only ones there except for a couple of Mexican men on horses, leading other horses. Clearly they were on the wrong side of the river and could have been arrested. It turned out that they were simply retrieving those horses that had crossed the river, and this is an ongoing problem for these guys. Wednesday morning we hiked the Upper Burro Pour-off trail, a short hike up 2 washes to where the water (when there is any rain) pours off the top in a waterfall. On the way back to the RV, we saw a Coachwhip snake in the road—about 3-4’ long, very coral in color. Neat. It was right about this time when I noticed that the windshield of the Honda is cracked. $$. Don’t know when it happened, but we will need to attend to this in $an Antonio, along with a headlight, and the RV repair$. Lunch in the RV was followed by a Jeep tour to Closed Canyon in the State Park. We were with another couple, from Michigan, who turned out to be a lot of fun. He is almost 80, which blew us away, and she was a little younger. We had drinks with them later, and are going to go to dinner with them on Friday. This was our first ‘social event’ of the RV trip. As I have mentioned, the humidity is exceedingly low. My eyeballs hurt, my skin feels like it is 3 sizes too small (grinchy skin?), and I am tired of cactus. I ache for a little humidity (not a lot), and I yearn to see tall trees. A week at Acadia would fit the bill—cool temps, humid air, lots of pine trees. |
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