IVS Day

A couple posts back I had some shots of a female Javelina and one of her brood.  I mentioned that they would probably make a show again as they stick to an established territory.  They did.  Well, not they but more like he.  We suspect that the male of the herd was on a little private outing.  As we were leaving early one morning we spotted him rooting around in the yard of one of the border patrol guys.

The peccary can't see or hear worth a darn, but their ability to smell is acute.  They are one of the reasons it is forbidden to leave anything outside.  All the bear-proof trash cans and recycle containers in the park aren't just for the bears.  There are a whole host of critters that can ruin your day by tearing up or making off with your stuff if it is not very securely put away.

On this same early morning we headed north toward Persimmon Gap, a 26 mile drive across the desert to the northern-most entrance station of the park.  We have been having some unusually wet and cloudy weather lately and on a good part of this morning's drive we had to idle through some pea-soup fog.  All of a sudden we broke out of the ground hugging cloud bank and were treated to a great view of the desert.



Sunrise bouncing off yucca and a distant fog bank.

And again with the tarantulas.  They are everywhere, if you come to Big Bend and don't see at least ten of them in the first half-hour then you should probably see an optometrist.

Later, we made it up to the Chisos Basin.  The clouds were still a big part of the view and they parsed the cliffs and peaks into some pretty interesting things to look at.

Meet Casa Grande.  This is a massive column of magma that never made it to the surface until after a few million years of erosion exposed it.

There is a short loop-hike near the Basin VC that takes about an hour to walk.  Some of the hike covers ground that is in a bit of a micro-climate.  Flowers that had long since faded elsewhere were still in peak bloom here.


If you click on the picture and look at it full-screen you can see some pretty cool texture in the bloom.

As we climbed up (south) in the direction of Emory Peak we turned and got a new perspective on The Window.


The Window takes on a different look from about 1,000 feet higher than the view of it at the Visitor Center.

As volunteers for the Interpretive Services of the NPS our 32 hours a week are split between 24 hours (3 days) in the Visitor Center and 8 hours doing what the park calls IVS (Interpretive Visitor Services).  On our IVS day we do not report to the desk of the Visitor Center, rather, we are to put on our uniforms and go out into the park and make ourselves available to visitors.  That is where today's pictures came from, just being out in the park.