Day 18 and 19 - Big Bend

No pictures for these days. The internet connection is poor and the upload keeps failing.

Sunday

We returned to the park and drove to the Chisos Mountains campground. It's located in the center of the park. We climbed to over 5,000 feet, encountered lots of switchbacks and found small camp sites. All sites had metal food storage lockers. The park recommends no trailers over 20ft. We saw units over 26ft. The sites are primitive and roads are narrow, but we could have gotten in here. We see no sense in testing fate, however.

We went to Rio Grande Village overlook and then into the village. It's located in the southeastern edge of the park, on the river. The campground was flooded. We found a picnic site for lunch.

We returned to our RV park at about 3pm. Fifteen Airstream trailers had pulled in while we were off playing. They were on a caravan from Dallas. We met a nice couple (Barry & Shirley Williams) from Sacramento.

Hot dog dinner, wrote post cards and completed our absentee voting ballot.

Monday - we were up early, showered and off to hike before it got too hot.

We drove the 7.7 mile Grapevine Hills Road. Slowly again because it was a rough gravel road through dry river beds. The hike to balance rock was a 2.2 mile round trip that felt much longer. The last 1/4 mile was a pretty steep climb to some dramatic views. We saw a coiled rattlesnake on the path back, scooted around it and got back to the car around noon. It was HOT and so were we!

After a stop at park headquarters in Panther Junction we drove to Chisos Mountain lodge for a picnic lunch. It was much cooler at 5,000 ft.

We then took the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive to Castolon (a 1920's military outpost on the Rio Grande). It's located in the southwestern edge of the park, on the river. Cottonwood campground is there ... it's closed, there's still standing water from the flood. The drive offered more beautiful volcanic mountain views. Yup, there are mountains in Texas.

We had an authenic Mexican dinner at Chili Pepper Cafe in Terlingua.

This was a long day. We decided to cool it on Wednesday and possibly take a Colorado River raft trip on Thursday.

Animal Sightings
coyote (1) - Saturday on Old Maverick Road

tarantula (5 or 6) - Sunday and Monday crossing park roads. They're prevalent now because it's mating season.

javelina (1) - Saturday on Old Maverick Road

rattlesnake (1) - Monday on trail to Balance Rock