Friday February 1, 2008

The first shot is the view from our tent and the second is of our resident roadrunner.

After our showers this morning, we went down to the Alpine Food Basket and loaded up on produce and meat. We filled the cooler and then went back to the motel and packed the rest of our gear around the cooler. After having breakfast, we headed out for Big Bend. We finally got to the entrance gate and then it was another 30 miles to the Ranger Station. We stopped in for a break and then drove for another 20 miles to the Rio Grande Campground. We finally got our site picked out and set about getting the tent up. It was a bit slow as this was our first time with the new test, but we did manage to get it up and staked out. We then got the inflatable mattress out and this is where we really got into a mess! Apparently, we were supposed to charge the battery for 12 hours before the first use. Well, we went to Plan B which was to us the power in the car with a converter. This worked just so - so. The bed blew up about a quarter of the way and then just stopped. We just couldn't get it to take on more air. We gave up on the bed and got the rest of the gear stowed. We had some onlookers as we were setting up - a roadrunner, a coyote who wandered through the site, a woodpecker just over our heads and a rabbit. We had dinner of lime chicken (left over from last night's dinner) and rice with veggies. We then walked down to the ampitheater for the ranger program. It was quite good - all about the Texas Rangers in this area. When we left the ampitheater, we somehow took a wrong turn and ended up walking around for a while in the dark - we did have a flashlight, but there are no streetlights or anything to focus on. We finally saw a few lights in the distance which were caused by lights on in RV's. We have no idea how we got so turned around, but it was good to see our tent. When we got into bed, the fun began - there was so little air in the mattress that our heads and feet were in the air and our butts just a inch off the ground. Whenever one of us turned over, the other got seasick! We had some good laughs and then finally got so tired we just fell asleep. We woke up several times in the night to hear the coyotes howling - what a primeval sound.