Mar 2007

We get up early and pack up. Before we even hitch up, someone is waiting to take our campsite and another person stops by and ask if our campsite is available. All the campsites in the park have been filled the last night or two.

We entertain some on-lookers as we back out of our tight spot. It goes pretty well. We were parked between a bunch of trees, but we manage to get out of our spot in about 5 minutes.

Most of the day was spent riding through Texas desert. We drove next to the Rio Grande River for about 50 miles -- still polluted green muck. In case I didn't mention in any earlier posts, the Rio Grande is not what I expected; it's not very wide and it is green, dirty and polluted.

It's Jere's birthday so we let him pick out the XM radio stations to help with the long drive. We did see some wildlife: several wild burros, several groups of antelope, several mountain goats and some grazing CAMELS in a field. I did a double-take when I saw the camels grazing in a field. Not sure why they were in a field.

It got really windy after we parked at the campsite. I went to the laundry to wash sheets and it started to hail. I turned on the tv at the laundry and saw there was first a tornado watch near us and then saw it change to a tornado warning. The sky was really dark to the east of us, so I told Jere and Joe to come over in the laundry during the storm and til we figured out exactly where the tornado warning was. It was close, but not where we were. They were teasing me about worrying so much, but when you're not exactly sure where you are and the tv station is instructing everyone in a trailer to seek shelter (and it's hailing and super windy), it's a little disconcerting. Wind gusts were in the 40s here, but not tornado. We're at Fort Davis, TX and the tornado sighting was near Bakersfield TX.

This is a "catch up day" to do a few things we missed at the park and some R&R time and some chores. We debated about leaving today, but we have a nice campsite here and it is very relaxing, so we decide to stay another day. We'll be doing a lot of traveling and one-day stops the next 2 weeks so thought we needed this day to relax a little.

We bicycle over to the RV Park and see the spots that we could have had to camp at when we arrived (but chose the other campground instead). We all agree that our campground is much, much nicer than the RV Park. We don't have electric and water, but so far we haven't needed more than is in our holding tanks and we run the generator for an hour each morning and evening to re-charge the battery -- and use the coffee maker in the morning :-)


Despite the 90 degree heat in mid afternoon, we decide to drive to Boquilla Canyon for a short hike. It's not much of a hike, but we did find it interesting to watch two canoes in the Rio Grande River that docked on the Mexico side after the one canoe tipped. There are signs everywhere in the park forbidding people to go to the Mexican shore and to never buy products from the Mexicans on the shore of the Rio Grande. If you go to the Mexican shore and than come back to the U.S. side, it's a $5000 fine. Hopefully the border patrol never saw them.

We're taking a scenic drive of the western half of the park today. We drive and take short hikes every few miles. Some nice scenery, some interesting historical features, but a hot day for some of the hikes. At the end of the day when we hike into Santa Helena Canyon, and the coolness of the canyon felt wonderful. This is our first 90 degree day of the trip.

We catch up on some chores and schoolwork in the morning, then decide to head out to a nearby 4x4 road to look at a tinaja.

We hike out to the tinaya, but then make the mistake of deciding to continue on the 4x4 Old Ore Road instead of turning around and heading back. It was 20 miles on a 4x4 dirt, rutty, bumpy road and took about 4 hours. We really didn't think it through much when we made that decision. It was late in the day so we didn't get off Old Ore Road til about 7:30pm. We did see a lot of flowering yucca and some other interesting things on the road, but it was a long drive. Interestingly, we did not pass one car driving the other way for the entire 20 miles! Which was very good since it was a one lane road and many areas would not have allowed two cars to pass, so someone would have had to back up. We did get to the top of one hill on the road and stopped and all 3 of us sat up and stretched out to see where the road went since we couldn't see the road sitting down in the seat--Joe thought that was a lot of fun. I just looked and asked "Are you sure there's a road down there?"

Since we were driving home in early evening, we got to see a herd of havelinas by the road and took a quick picture. We had a havelina walk through our campsite earlier in the day but I didn't get a great picture of it. It's a cousin to the wild boar and hippo, and there are warning signs at all the campsites to not leave food out, plus all the trashcans are "havelina-proof".

After a good breakfast we drive up to the Chisos Basin area and hike the Lost Mine trail. It's about 5 miles round trip with ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE SCENERY!!! It's a must do if you ever get here. It took us about 4 hours since we stopped at every shady spot that had a nice view on the way up, and spent at least 30 minutes at the top while eating our lunch and enjoying the incredible 360 degree view of the park. We went through 5 large bottles of water and it was tiring, but well worth the effort. Not sure what the temp was on the mountain, but the campground high today was 88 degrees and sunny.

After the hike we wander around the Chisos Basin area, including another nature walk to the Windows overlook. Then we drive over to the Dugout Wells nature walk and do that one also, before returning to the campsite.