Down on the Rio Grande

November 3rd to the 6th, we were in Big Bend National Park, on the southwestern edge of Texas. Ellyn had a desire to go there for her birthday on 11/3. We parked in the campground at Rio Grande Village with no hook ups, and made ourselves comfortable for 3 days. As with most of our travel since August, it was 3 days of very good weather.

On our way into the park, it looked like there was miles and miles of nothing. The route down US 385 from Marathon, TX goes through some very flat and very sparse Texas desert. Big Bend National Park is probably the most remote place that we'll be at during this trip. Even with Verizon, there wasn't any cell phone coverage.

Once in the park, we did start seeing some different terrain, as there are some hills and rocky mountains on the western side of the park. On the way down to Rio Grande Village on the east side, we could make out the Rio Grande valley with trees along the river and some shear cliffs on the Mexico side. But most interestingly, when we looked at the desert floor, we found an incredible variety of cactus and other plants...some with flowers and fruits.

The Chihuahuan Desert became more and more beautiful to us as we got to know it. We took a short hike to overlook the Rio Grande and one of its canyons. While there, we saw the Mexican border town. Before the days of "homeland security", visitors to the park could very by row boat over to the village to buy crafts and eat in the restaurants. The border is now totally closed but we found that some village residents sneak over to put their crafts and cash jars along the riverside trails. The US government had signs that we could get prosecuted if we bought some of the crafts. One resident, we learned his name was Victor, sang from the other side of the river and had a tip jar in the trail. He came over to our side and we took his photo. It made us sad that world events way out of this little town's control, now made it so that their tourist trade was eliminated. The Park Service tries a little by having some of their stuff in the shops but twice as expensive.

Other things we did in the park....

We took the walk to the Hot Springs right along the Rio Grande. On the way there, we saw swallow nests along the cliffs. A woman in the hot spring, said that sme people take the clear water, from the source, to drink. We just soaked our feet at the edge of the pool. There were several stone buildings in ruin left from the days a Hot Springs Resort had been at that location.

We drove up to the Chisos Basis which is like being in a large volcano with a rim of rocks all the way around. Despite the recent sightings of black bears and mountain lions, we took a hike around the basin loop. We are noticing that we're getting in a bit better shape for hikes and this one was a perfect length and challenge half of the trail was a steady uphill. We had lunch, that day, in the Lodge restaurant with a beautiful view and we used their wifi for a while. One thing notable about the hike is that the basin has an amazing diversity of vegetation - evergreens, trees and cactus all intermingled. The most amazing thing was the HUGE century plants that were just past flowering.

We went on a bird-watching walk with a ranger and several experienced birders. One funny thing was a Common Roadrunner came but and all the birders ignored it - I think they consider it as uninteresting as us northeasterners consider squirrels. With the birders, we did see sparrows, woodpeckers, doves, flycatchers, and more. It's amazing what you can see when you look closely.

As for wildlife, there is supposed to be an incredible diversity of wildlife in the park. Of course, we only saw a sampling of it but we did, in addition to the birds, see bats each evening in the campground, a snake on the road, a coyote running, a HUGE wasp, and little fish in the river. Unfortunately, we did not see any Javelinas.

The one thing that was most amazing experience at Big Bend National Park was that there were very few people there to interrupt the vast silence and wide expansive views to the horizon. No highway noise, no sirens, no trains. Just the occasional sounds and sights of birds and bugs.

Click below to play a slideshow of more of our picture from Big Bend National Park.