Thursday February 7, 2008

We had to move our tent yesterday as they were beginning the irrigation in our section. We had been camped on the grass, but had to move up to the gravel pad. We are glad we moved as we most certainly would have been floating by this morning. We had french toast for breakfast and said goodbye to our young neighbors - their tour is heading to San Antonio. We decided to go into Alpine for more supplies and to do laundry. We are sitting now in the local Mc Donald's where we have been filling in the past several blogs. We will try to reach the kids a little later after doing the laundry and head back to camp hopefully before dark. We will probably move to Chisos Basin tomorrow as we feel we have done all of the hikes we can do in this area of the park. We will see how the weather is in the Basin - it is supposed to be not as cold at night, but also not as hot during the day. We haven't posted any photos this time as it takes so long, but hope to get some on again as soon as we can. It should be a bit easier at the Basin where they do have the internet access at the patio.

Wednesday February 6, 2008

Had eggs and toast for breakfast this morning and then went for a walk at Dugout Wells. They had a lovely nature trail there and we enjoyed seeing the various types of cacti. We saw a small bird with gray breast - not sure what it's name is - but it catches insects and skewers the ones it is not going to eat right way on the spines of the cacti and then eats them later - quite inventive! We then went to take a hike at Grapevine Hills - we never did find the trailhead after driving many miles down a dirt road - so we set out on our own to make a path. We climbed to the top of a hill and were rewarded with marvelous views of the surrounding area. We had a few thorns and scratches to attend to when we got back to the car, but it was worth it. We had pasta for dinner and chatted with the Ameritreks kids again for a while before going to bed. The camp host delivered our package from Beans this morning, but we discovered it was not the right part - did not fit our bed. We called Beans again and they said to call back tomorrow as they were going to contact the manufacturer.

Tuesday February 5, 2008

It was warm last night - in the 70's. We kept the tent flaps open until the middle of the night when it started to cool down. Woke up this morning to howling winds - 45 to 50 mph. We went out to put extra stakes on the tent. We ate a cold breakfast in the screen porch as it was too windy to light the stove. We stuck around this morning until the wind abated and then went for a walk to the camp store. Dave is working on carving a spoon so we stayed in camp today. We took several turns around the campground chatting with different folks we met along the way. We had Hawaiin chicken for dinner - it was good. A group of 14 young people pulled in next to us. They are traveling across the US with a program called Ameritreks. Most are college graduates taking a break before getting jobs. They were from England, Denmark, Germany, and Korea. They will spend two days here and then head for San Antonio, New Orleans, Memphis, DC, and finally NYC. We went into the tent after a while and watched a movie on the laptop.

Monday February 4, 2008

We slept like babies - the bed is great! Woke up briefly three times with the howling of coyotes, but they didn't keep us up. After breakfast, we drove to the camp store for a hot shower ($1.50 for 5 minutes - not bad) and it felt great. Drove out to Boquillas Canyon and walked the trail over the ridge and down to the river. Met a singing Mexican named Victor who was serenading us from the other side (Eii, yii, yii, yii). We put a couple of dollars in his bucket - we felt safe doing this as he was not selling anything. As we came back up the trail, we saw another Mexican crossing the river. Victor said not to worry, it was his friend, Manuel, coming to pick up the tips - quite illegal for him to be on this side of the river, but I suppose the chances of getting caught are slim in such a remote area. We came back to camp for lunch - took a rest in the shade of the tent - and then we were ready for another walkabout. We drove to the trailhead for Hot Springs. This was used as a health spa from 1909 to 1916 when they were forced to close due to border unrest from the Mexican Revolution. It reopened in 1927 and the owner built a motor court and general store which also served as a US Post Office. The owners sold the property to the state of Texas in 1942 and eventually it was given to the National Park Service. There were a few petroglyphs and pictographs on the cliffs, but they were in poor shape. There were also large nests in the cliffs (looked like hornet nests on steroids) - we assume they belong to a type of swallow. The hot springs are adjacent to the Rio Grande. I took off socks and shoes and waded for a bit in the 105 degree water - too hot outside to truly enjoy - would be fab ulous on a cold day. Met us with our tent neighbors there (there are only 3 tents in the whole campground - all the rest are RVs). They are from northern Arizona. We invited them for a dinner of burgers and Greek salad - they brought steamed cabbage and Dove chocolates for dessert. Had a lovely time chatting with them until about 9:30. They will be leaving for Chisos Basin tomorrow.

Sunday February 3, 2008

Slept a little better last night, but the mattress is still not blown up as it should be. Our next door neighbors, Rob and Karen from Ontario had a compressor which we thought might work. We dragged the mattress back to the rest room and hooked up the compressor to the mattress using duct tape to hold the hose onto the intake valve . . . and it worked! The mattress blew up completely! Thank you, Rob and Karen! Rob is a physics teacher and Karen is a meditation instructor - we exchanged email addresses and hope that they will come to visit Mystic some time. We called called Beans and they are sending a replacement pump, but for now we are okay. We took the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive today and stopped to hike a few of the walks along the way. We stopped at the Sam Nail Ranch - built in 1916 - which was an adobe house. The people were self-sufficient with milk cows, chickens, hogs, a vegetable garden and fruit orchard, windmills to carry water from the dug wells for ranch use and irrigation. We stopped at Blue Creek Ranch where the house still stands - built of natural stone - plastered walls - located in the bottom of a wide canyon. There was even a circular corral left made of upright sticks and small trees. Our next hike was the Burro Mesa Pouroff - this trail led to a lovely box canyon. Along the way there were several pouroffs or dry waterfalls which have carved smooth troughs into the stone. During the rainy season, this must be an awesome sight. We drove on to Castelon where a few old houses and a store remain. The store is still in business and is run by the park service. Until the border closed in 2002, Mexicans came across to purchase items here. Now they have to travel 160 miles on bad roads to get to the nearest town from their small village across the river. We finished our drive at the Santa Elena Canyon - lovely views. Drove back and stopped at Chisos Basin. They have wifi on their patio so we blogged Friday and Saturday there. They also have an outdoor TV. Because it was Super Bowl Sunday, there was quite a crowd - we finally left without finishing the blog for today as we felt people were looking for seats for the game and it was getting quite chilly. We have been having true desert temps - 20's and 30's at night and quite hot during the day (got to 92 today!). We saw three mule deer on our way back to the parking lot and then when we got on the road and were headed back to camp we saw four javelinas next to the road - they look like wild pigs, but they are really peccaries. Back at camp we walked to the ampitheater to see a program on snakes of the Big Bend.

Saturday February 2, 2008

We both woke up this morning a bit weary and sore from our weird sleeping arrangement and vowed to remedy it today. We dragged the mattress out of the tent and hauled it down to the restroom where we plugged it in to charge it. We stayed around camp most of the day - just took a short hike behind our site to the Rio Grande (about 1/4 of a mile). We saw a few grebes on an inlet and some turtles sunning themselves. The river here is very shallow and someone could easily cross into Mexico or vice versa here although of course it is illegal to cross here so we stayed on our side. There were a few places along the path where Mexicans left wares to purchase - rocks, braided bracelets, walking sticks, metal wire shaped scorpions - and a jar to put the money in if you were to buy. However, since the fine for purchasing goods from illegals is $5000, we were not tempted. We got back to camp and had a dinner of garlic shrimp and rice and then tried the mattress again. This time it filled up about 1/3 of the way after charging all day. We decided we would call Bean's in the morning as there is obviously something wrong with the pump. We went down to the local Ranger Station and watch a movie on the Big Bend - it was very good, but the room was small and it was hot in there. The temperature during the day was 80. It does get down into the 30's at night though, so we are thankful for our flannel sheets and comforter. We read for a while and then fell asleep only to be awaken by the loud braying of wild burros. We haven't seen any yet, but have saw their scat on our walk.

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.