Knockin' Around

With it being unusually cold for such a long time and with the failure of the electric heater for the hot water tank we have been chewing up the propane.  It is time for a trip down to the Rio Grande Village where we can get our tank refilled.

It's a good 20 miles to the village and you skirt around the northeast base of the Chisos Mountains.  After our little deep-freeze week the north face is sporting a striped coat of white.

While out and about we also decided to check out what are known around here as 'food rocks'.  One of these formations is called cinnamon buns.  They are not giant structures, actually they are only slightly larger than the real thing.  If you know where to go, you can just walk right up to these things.

Pretty cool.  We are learning that there are all kinds of interesting formations around old volcanos.  There is another one, called 'puffy biscuits' that we are going to look for next.  We have heard that it takes a fairly deep hike into the desert t osee those.

The park also has a fossil bone exhibit that we dropped by.  It is more of a picnic ground than an exhibit.  Plans are in place and money has been appropriated for the construction of a structure with top-notch exhibits.  In fact, some of the exhibits, a bronze mega-crocodile head and bronze T-rex skull have already been delivered to the park. But while looking around we ran across some tracks of more contemporary residents.

There was a whole slew of these coyote tracks in the mud alongside what is normally a very dry wash.  I followed them into the desert for a ways, there were at least three individuals and they were meandering around near the exhibit but walking a straight line crossing the desert.

The propane tank is out behind the RGV store in a chain-link fence enclosure.  There is a guy that is at work on certain days and can only do propane fills in about a two hour window.  You have to hit it just right if you want to get your tank filled.  We did and I went around back with him to lift the tank out of the truck and put it on scale.

As I was setting the tank down he asked me if I would like to meet his friend, as he pointed to a spot on the ground just outside the enclosure.  The camouflage was so good that it took a second before I could see the coil.  But there lay a rattlesnake, not moving a muscle save an infrequent flick of the tongue.

This guy got caught out in the open when the big chill hit.  He was not particularly large, probably not more than a couple or three feet long and pretty much frozen stiff.  Not so much as a twitch out of him as I caught a couple of images with the iPhone.

A fresh tank of propane and it was time to head back to Panther Junction.  Since the speed limit is a maximum of 45mph anywhere in the park, it is not a quick trip.  But it worked out okay for seeing a sunset over the Chisos from a side of the range that we have never been at this time of day before.