From Big Bend to the Pecos River

Sunday, April 3, 2011 - Yesterday evening about 7:30 we made our last scenic drive in Big Bend National Park, down to the Boquillas Canyon.  The village of Boquillas is right across the river, and the Mexicans bring their native wares over here to try to sell them.  Since it is illegal for them to cross the river, they apparently just leave them and hope for the buyers to leave the money for them.  Since it is also illegal to buy anything from them, I don't imagine they get much business.

You can see the village from our viewpoint, and the brochures say that sometimes a Mexican serenades the American visitors from a sandbar in the river.  We didn't see anyone when we were here.

We slept much better last night, with air conditioning again, even though this campground is not much more than a parking lot.  But it had electricity!

But a roadrunner came by this morning.

And 3 coyotes also came by.

We got an early start today, finally, and were on the road at 8:25.  Every time we met an RV heading down to Big Bend, Joe yelled, "hot, hot, don't you know it's hot."  We saw some Border Patrol activity before we got outside the park, but don't know what was going on.

We are headed toward Del Rio, but the campground we have picked out is about 40 miles before that.  We checked the weather for Del Rio today, and it is forecast 93 degrees, with 78% humidity.  Oh, yeah.

We finally got out of the park and headed East.  We got to Langtry about 12:30 and toured Judge Roy Bean's place, which has a Visitor's Center in front of it.  Judge Bean, also known as the Hanging Judge, made this place famous during the years when the railroad was being built through here.

The saloon burned down once, and when he rebuilt, he also built a separate building as his residence, which he called the Opera House, trying to get Jersey Lilly Langtry to come perform in Langtry, the town he had named after her.

They also had a very nice cactus garden here.

We ate a quick lunch in the RV here, then headed on down the road.  We crossed the Pecos River and camped at the Seminole Canyon State Historical Park, which is only about 1 mile passed the river.  This picture is from the bridge on Highway 90.  The river is a very pretty green color, I haven't learned yet where the color comes from.

This campground is just right off the road, very deserty (not a tree in sight), and it is 96 today. They have guided tours of hikes through the canyon, but we'll skip that.

After dinner, we drove down to the River at one of the Armistad Recreational Area boat ramps.

The water felt pretty good, we probably should have jumped in since we are hating this heat.

On our way back into camp, we came up on 4 turkeys, apparently out looking for dinner.

We also saw two bunnies beside the road.  And we came upon this oven used to feed the railroad workers.

We have electricity at this campground, so we are looking forward to sleeping cool again.  We won't be staying anyplace without electricity from now on, unless this weather cools back off.  Joe was reading about some caves up by San Antonio, and one stays a constant 72 degrees.  Joe said we are going to go find it and just sit inside it all day.  We thought we would have this campground to ourselves, but a group of bicyclists came in (Coast to Coast, I think is the group name).  Their coordinator (or whatever) came through in a Penske truck and drop off gear at about 15 sites.  Then as it got closer to 5:00 p.m., several other RVs pulled in, so I'm guessing this park is nearly full.

Big Bend - Day 2

Saturday, April 2 - We did not sleep well last night because it was so warm (hot), so this morning we moved over to the public campgroound which has electricity, and we have our a/c cranked!  We took a 140-mile drive in the car today, over most of the roads accessible by car.  Big Bend looks a lot like Arizona, so although it's pretty, it is not that impressive to us, especially since it also has Arizona's heat!  I think the heat wave that hit there Thursday/Friday has arrived here.

We drove all the way down to the Rio Grande River, but it is pretty small and shallow at this spot, the Santa Elena Canyon.  They do rafting trips through this canyon, and in fact, we saw some people on rafts, but one guy got and walked and the water was only about knee-deep in the middle of the river.

This Canyon is pretty and it looks like the river turns here, and cuts through these steep canyon walls.

There is a hiking trail here too but we didn't think we could stand that much exercise.  It was near 100 degrees by now.

We did see another roadrunner, but no other wildlife.
We stopped at the Chisos Basin Lodge, which is a higher elevation, and the temperature was back down about 85.  We had lunch here while I posted my blog from yesterday.  We had a nice view from the lodge, and there is a rock formation called the "window" which gives views of mountains beyond.  It's hard to see in this picture, but it was a pretty view.

On our way back to the campground, we had a view of this very pretty ridge, which I could see from my kitchen window at the campground we were at last night.

When we got back to camp, the car registered 101, but it had been as high as 102 a few minutes earlier.

This is way too hot for us.  Tomorrow we are heading to the Seminole National Historic Park near Del Rio.  We surely hope this hot spell gets ahead of us.

Big Bend - Day 1

April 1, 2011-Couple items I forgot from yesterday's blog.  John called to let me know Tampa was having severe weather and that he had watched the storm (tornado) come across the bridge from his office.  Fortunately, he didn't have any damage at home or work, but the storm took out several fences in his subdivision.  Second, on our scenic ride, we did see a roadrunner.

Today We broke camp and headed into town to poke around Ft. Davis, which is the highest town (elevation 5,050) in Texas.

 First we toured the actual fort, which is in the process of being restored.  It is an interesting fort, and we got to tour the barracks, 3 houses which were officers quarters, and the hospital. We got there just as a video was starting, narrated by Karem Abdul-Jabbar, so we learned some of its history, which includes occupancy by both the Confederate and Union armies, including the buffalo soldiers, mostly there to protect the San Antonio-El Paso route from raiding Apaches.
 

We learned a few things.  The early soldiers did not have any civilian clothing and the only way you could tell if they were off duty was by wearing a straw hat.  They had 4 different hats they wore when on duty.  This may have been the beginning of the saying about wearning many hats.

The mattress on the very narrow cots was made of hay, and it was very thin.  This is probably the origination of the saying, "hit the hay," or "hit the sack."  The bed wasn't too uncomfortable, but the pillow was awful.

After we toured those buildings, we went back to the officer's quarters.  Joe decided to take advantage of his fragile status after foot surgery, so we used the golf cart.





Then we toured the hospital, where I made a "deposit" in the bedpan/urinal depository (while talking on the phone to John).

We left there and drove into town to look around.  We toured the library which was pretty old-fashioned, and a nearby hotel which had antique furnishings. 




Joe found his replacement cell phone in the library.


We had lunch at a little Mexican restaurant, then stopped at a broom shop.

Finally, we headed out of town to Big Bend National Park.  As we were driving through the park, we saw 2 fighter jets overhead, don't know where they were out of.  We arrived there about 6:00 p.m., and it was probably 100 degrees.  I think Joe may have been right about making a left turn in Arizona -- we would probably be in Colorado now.  We are staying at the National Park campground, which does not have any hook-ups, and We can only run the generator between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., so we got both air conditioners running right away to try to cool the RV down so we could sleep.  Our camping neighbors (a young couple with 2 small kids, camping in a tent!) told us it is supposed to be 103 tomorrow.  Our visit to Big Bend National Park may be a short one!

Ft. Davis, Texas

March 31, 2011 - We had a full day today.  This is a really nice state campground, with full hook-ups.  Each campsite has a covered picnic area. 

We had another visit by wildlife this morning.

We went over to the office here this morning and paid our camping fee.  They said they had a wifi hotspot there, but I went back later and could never get online.  Then we walked over to their pool, the world's largest spring-fed pool covering 1.75 acres and staying 72-76 degrees year round.  This pool is crystal clear and scuba divers come here.  It has a depth of 25 ft.  Actually, there was a class of scuba divers here getting their certification today.

It even has a diving area, with a depth of 20 ft. here.  We could see a few catfish swimming around, and lots of minnows.

After I gave up on posting my blog, we broke camp and headed down the road to Ft. Davis, to the state park there, another really nice campground.  This was only a 38 mile drive, but later in the afternoon we took a 127-mile scenic drive in the Explorer.  We set up camp and went over the the Indian Lodge in the park for lunch.  This Lodge was built by the CCCs in the 1930s, and they still use a lot of the original furniture, which was also built by the CCCs.  We went back to camp and rested, and I finally have Wifi at the RV, so I was able to post my first blogs.  A little before 5:00, we took off on our scenic drive.  This drive took us past the McDonald Observatory, one of the major astronomical research facilities in the world.  They had just closed for the day, and their "star parties" are held on Tues., Fri., and Sat., (today is Thurs.), we we missed that as well.  We drove up the hill and turned around.

We continued on our drive, with scenery much like Arizona's high country.  We had mountains, canyons, a lot of dried brush so we don't know if it hasn't greened up for the spring, or it is just that dry here.  The Texas have their own language, and I thought this sign was humorous.

Most states just say "range cattle" or something similar.  But we did come across some loose cattle on this drive.  We passed Sawtooth Mountain, elev. 7,718.

And another mountain, Mt. Livermore, 8,831, but we didn't get a picture of that one (we weren't sure which one it was).  We are pretty close to the Mexican border here, and there was a border patrol balloon flying overhead.

Our destination for this drive was Marfa, Texas, famous for its sightings of strange lights.  We stopped at the Dairy Queen for a treat and information, and the waitress said they are usually seen around 10:00 or 10:30, when it gets completely dark.  There was a viewing center a few miles out of town, so we drove out there about dusk. 

We spotted 4 antelope along the way, so that was exciting.  We stayed until 10:00 (past our bedtime) but never did see anything, so we drove back to the campground, weary from our long day.  There was a pretty sunset, though, and it is said that this area has one of the darkest night skies in the U.S.