After a leisurely drive through hill country, we arrived in Big Bend. At first glance, Big Bend confirms Catherine’s theory that only land that nobody wanted turned into a national park. It is some of the most uninviting, ugly country we’ve been in.
This picture somehow makes it look much nicer than it actually is – plus you get to see the Mule Ear formation in the background. The park started gaining points from Denise when we saw several roadrunners. Well, she saw 1, but Catherine saw 4 during the day. Poor Denise had finally quit helping Catherine look for road hazards, but missed her favorite wildlife.
We stopped at the visitor’s center in Castolon. They used buildings from the town that was here from the early 1900s until the 1960s. A million pounds of cotton was grown in the valley over about 20 years. A flood washed the old cotton mill away a few years ago. They also did a bunch of goat farming down here. Because they were in the middle of nowhere (even now it’s 100 miles to the nearest standard grocery store, dentist or doctor), little attention was paid to the international border and the town became a bit of illegal trading post. Here’s the visitor’s center building.
Because wildlife prefers parking lots, we found Denise a new mammal. She finally saw her first collard peccary (aka javelina). This animal blends in well went the landscape: scruffy and ugly.
After a quick drive down to the Rio Grande, we did a quick hike up the Santa Elena Canyon. This hike is neat not only for the 1500 vertical feet of solid limestone, but because one of them is Mexico (the left side in this picture) and the other is the US. By the way, this is view in all the guidebooks and on the cover of the Nevada Barr book, Borderline. (If you don't read Nevada Barr, you should. The first in the series is Track of the Cat.)
Denise has made excellent strides in her cliff walking, and while she did not dally here, she didn’t act like she was going to die of fright either. You can see a tiny Denise dot on the trail just as it curves back towards the cliffs – an attempt at scale.
Catherine stopped to take pictures back over the Chihauhuan dessert – the little creek is US property.
If you notice, the Rio Grande here isn’t really so grande. In fact, we both threw rocks across the river (there is even video evidence of Denise’s success). Retrieving that rock would have required about 20 seconds of wading, but could land you in jail (assuming your legs survived the raw sewage and toxic waste). Until a few years ago, trade still flourished across the border with tourists crossing to buy from locals along the river. Recently, National Security has ended the border crossings, but the US hasn’t done anything about the pollution. Here’s an artsy similar view.
At the end of the trail, big boulders littered the ground. Here’s Denise squeezing through the maze. Some tourists have added mud hand prints to the boulders – modern day petroglyphs! Catherine is sure NPS wouldn’t approve, but she does.
We saw a Northern Cardinal, a Black Phoebe (new species for Denise, but one lived outside Catherine’s building is Pasadena), Say’s Pheobes, a Pyrrhuloxia, a Canyon wren (quite rare except near water and vertical cliffs according to Sibley’s Guide to Birds), a Ruby Crowned Kinglet and a bunch of Ravens (violating border crossing laws). One other fun feature of the trail – critter tracks. Maybe millipede? Catherine saw a big dead one. Yeah, and fingernail clippers are buried in the bottom of the car. Oh well.
We drove back through the land that Denise now describes as “garbage” up to the Sotol Vista where we met some very friendly airforce medics. They asked what my PhD was in and they said, “Cool. Can you make mosquitoes mixed with flies?” Well, yes, yes Catherine can. That’s a bit terrifying. Anyway, here’s the garbage land and then the view. The second row of mountains has a notch (the Santa Elena Canyon) in it – all the cliffs to the left and behind this notch belong to Mexico.
After making the poor little blue car climb about 4000 feet (that’s about ¾ of a mile) vertically, we found real trees and cold weather. Why is it cold everywhere? Linda said it was 80 degrees in LA today. We checked into the Chisos Lodge, but Catherine was nearly forced to sleep in the campground. Why? She happened to spot a Black Crested Titmouse at the slightly dripping faucet outside, but couldn’t get Denise before the bird flew away.
At this point, Denise was in a bit of a snit, but we set out on a walk to the short nature loop near the cabin. On the way we saw a Cameron’s Mountain White-Tailed Deer. Then we got to the nature trail and took a picture of the notch (that notch will become important).
We headed back to sit at the slightly dripping faucet in hopes the Black Crested Titmouse would return. After seeing a few Rofous Crowned Sparrows and a Spotted Towhee, Denise was losing hope and Catherine was in fear of her warmth. Thankfully, one showed up and put on a show.
We headed back to sunset through this notch window thing. We nearly gave up when we spotted a group of serious photographers heading up to the overlook. We followed like good sheep. They were a photography club including several professional photographers from Houston. One even has a book of Big Bend for sale at the bookstore here (it was closed so we can’t comment on the quality). Another took pictures of equipment, think the big oil refineries. They set up.
We took out our point and shoot cameras. Here are a couple of examples. The folks were really friendly and helpful, even showing us some tricks with our settings and we listened to how the professionals frame the shot. Sadly, the kid who was in charge of the clouds left them behind the mountains, so the sunset isn’t as spectacular as it could have been.
If you turn around and look back, here’s the view up to the lodge.
At dinner at the lodge restaurant, we noticed folks checking email. Without cell phone service and 100 miles from a grocery store, we thought this was odd. But sure enough, by driving beside the restaurant, we were able to g-call our husbands and check email. The connection isn’t good enough to upload pictures while sitting in the car, but wow, even in the middle of nowhere, Google knows everything.
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