Checking Out Our New Surroundings

Yesterday was an abbreviated introduction to our new home for the next five months.  A good part of the day was spent just getting out of Fort Stockton and across 126 miles of desert to Panther Junction, Big Bend National Park, Texas.  We got our rig into its spot and met a couple of the people we would be working with.  Today being a Saturday there are no formal activities planned for us.  Our volunteer colleagues that got here the week before us are all on a weekend river trip, so we won't be getting to meet them until school resumes on Monday.  With time on our hands we struck out to explore some of the vastness of Big Bend.

Big Bend has a vastness that is not limited to just its physical size.  It has history recorded in its rocks that goes back hundreds of millions of years, it is home to more than 450 species of birds (more than anywhere else), its skies have been certified the darkest in the country and one of only ten places on the planet certified for dark sky stargazing.  It is the only national park that contains an entire mountain range within its borders and includes an ecology of more than 1,200 species of plants, 56 species of reptiles, and 75 species of mammals.  All of this is very interesting but Cyndee and I are coming to the realization that our new job will have people approaching us and expecting us to answer any question they may have about anything they may have seen or heard about.  Uh-oh, I don't know if this old dog can learn that many new tricks.

Panther Junction is sort of the middle of the park.  As we pulled up to the intersection of the residence road and the main road we chose to go east, in the direction of Rio Grande Village (RGV).  The village is about 25 miles away and the drive is mostly desert that is slowly descending to the river plain.  But from the very moment you get pointed to the east you can't help but notice a prominent geological feature, a high, stratified cliff that almost fills your whole field of vision.

This is an unmagnified photo.  We would later learn, after driving towards these cliffs for more than a half hour that they were a little more than 30 miles away!

Zoomed in to 300mm the cliffs look as though they are just down the road, not 30 miles distant.  Check out the giant Ocotillo in the foreground.

All the literature says we are in the desert, people talk about this being the desert and there are certainly plenty of cacti, creosote bush and desert animals, but everywhere we look there is a lot more green vegetation than we expected.  Relative to the kind of desert we were in just before and after the North Rim we would almost call this place lush.  But we would soon learn that not only had there been a break in the multi-year drought, but rain was coming in what is historically a dry period.

Just a few miles short of our goal of the Rio Grande Village I had to stop and photograph these amazing cacti called ocotillo.  Having grown up in the semi-arid, high plains of the Texas panhandle I thought that I was pretty familiar with cactus and yucca but in only a matter of minutes I have seen a whole slug of species I never knew existed.  The ocotillo sticking up ten feet or more command you to pay attention to them.  There are so many other species to enjoy but those ocotillos keep my attention.

Normally these ocotillos look like dried out tree branches but recent rains have them covered in little green leaves.

In the above photo you can just make out a tunnel in the upper left of the frame.  Why they built a tunnel instead of just cutting a pass is beyond me but I am glad they did.  It is one of the few man-made structures in this park that is architecturally interesting.

The tunnel is bigger than it appears.  It is two lanes wide and over 16 feet tall.  Eighteen wheelers can pass through here with no problem.  And that is a good thing since this is the only road there is to get to RGV.

A few minutes later and we were in RGV, home to two campgrounds, a general store, visitor center, ranger station and a border patrol station/border crossing.  I have no pictures of any of this.  Frankly I was taken aback at the look and condition of all the structures.  I know this is a harsh environment but, damn.  As best I could tell, these structures probably didn't look too hot the day they were built and now they all looked like they were overdue for remodeling.  My comment to Cyndee was that this was about the most architecturally uninteresting place we had been.  Maybe the rest of the park will be different.

After a quick lap around the campground and a look inside the campground store we headed on down to the end of the road and the point where the Rio Grande enters Boquillas Canyon.  We did not go to the visitor center because it was not open yet.  Neither of the two river visitor centers are open during the summer, it is just too darn hot.  They will open on the first of November and close again at the end of April.  We are now at the end of the 118 miles of the river within the park's boundaries.

This is the first time for Cyndee to see the US/Mexican border and my first time to see it as a wild river.  There have been plenty of times I have seen this river when crossing at major border crossings on my way to work, this is a way better way to see it.

Much of the river within Big Bend is not inside a canyon, rather it is a river valley that had agriculture off and on for nearly a century.

At one of the river overlooks there was a collection of painted walking sticks and wire art neatly displayed on rocks.  Near a couple of the rocks were coffee cans and crudely labeled cardboard signs suggesting a price for each of the trinkets.  We had noticed official park signs as we approached  the river warning visitors not to buy "souvenirs" and that if caught with them they would be confiscated and subject to fines.  In the picture above I spotted some fellows on the other side of the river.  They appeared to have ridden their burrows down to the river, crossed in a canoe and placed their wares then returned to the shade of their home side.  I expect that they will be coming back across some time before sunset to collect their things.

Looking west.  Just 118 miles from here is the exit of Santa Elena Canyon and the western border of the national park.

It is a little warm down here on the river.  Here we have spent most of the summer on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we saw it break above 80 degrees maybe once and now at the end of October in the Big Bend we're hoping for it to break under 90.

Its time to get home and do some more settling in.  We'll head west on our exploring tomorrow.