BIG BEND VACATION

APRIL, 1999
 
 

Sunset in the Chisos Mountains.
Big Bend is an interesting place because you can explore the desert, canyons and Rio Grande river
or go up to the mountains where the air is cool and trees grow.  The primary purpose of our
vacation was to do some birding, camping, hiking and 4X4ing. Nancy seen 31 new species
of birds and is now up to 214 on her life list.
 
 

Here we are about to start our 13 mile round trip hike to
the South Rim and Boot Spring in the Chisos Mountains.
I look happy now but by mile 10 I called it Nancy's Birding
March of Death.
 
 
 
 

Big Bend National Park is a place of solitude and beauty. Here Nancy takes in the scenery
at about the 4 mile point of our 13 mile hike.
 
 

On my way to the South Rim, mile 4 (all uphill).
 
 

We made it to the top.  What you see here is a plant growing
on the edge of an enormous cliff.
 
 

Here I am sitting on the edge of the cliff. You can see for
miles into Mexico.
 
 

This is what it looks like on a clear day. This picture is
from a postcard.
 
 

As you can see the day we were at the South Rim it was somewhat hazy due to pollution from
the U.S. and Mexico which gets trapped in the mountains.
 
 
 

Nancy looks a little tired after her long hike. We expected the rest of the trip to be
downhill since it was uphill all the way to this point.  Unfortunately, the rest of
the trail was extremely rugged and was up and down all the way back to camp.
I was disappointed we didn't see any Peregrine Falcons here as they nest
in the cliffs near where we were.
 
 

Here we are driving through the back roads of  Big Bend.
There are many miles of "roads" in the desert to explore.
 
 
 

Most of these roads are only fit for 4x4's, lucky we have one.
 
 
 

There were many interesting plants in the
desert. We seen a surprising number of
really beautiful flowers. But don't
touch. Everything has thorns or needles.
 
 
 
 

These interesting plants were fairly abundant. They
have a thick hard stem like a giant rose stem with tiny
leaves growing from it and lots of thorns. Since there
are no trees in the desert people cut them down
 to use as roofing materials.
 
 

This was our first camping location in Big Bend. It is on
the Mexican border near the Rio Grande River.
The only trouble we had here was Javelina's tried to get into
are tent two nights in a row. Its rather scary when something
starts pushing in the sides of your tent at 3 a.m.
 
 

Javelina are small pig like animals, though not actually
related to pigs, and are around 50 to 70 pounds with
large 4 inch tusks.  They are not really dangerous but they
can kill dogs and a few people have been torn up by them.
The ones in the camp ground had to be closer to 100
pounds, they were really fat. (Not our Picture)
 
 

This overlooks where we camped in the Chisos Mountains.
You can see a bunch of camp sites in the center of the picture.
It felt really good to camp in elevation as it was cool and the air
felt crisp.  There are no Javelina's up this high but there are
Black Bears and Mountain Lions though we didn't see any.
 
 
 
 
 

Driving the back country roads. You can drive for hours and never see anyone.