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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Spring break 2013. Big Bend National Park.

 Drive 8 boring miles west of Dallas and you will find Big Bend National Park.
We camped here for 3 nights. Hiked a total of 27 miles. And ate way too much junk food.

 Phil is a stud and cooked every meal to give me a break from cooking. Sometimes people call him Chef Phil. Here he is making quesadillas at our first campsite.

 Here is an awesome desert plant.

 See the blue car? That is where our first campsite was. So isolated. It was deafening quiet out there and we never saw another soul. Just heard the sounds of an owl at night. 

 Our first full day started with a hike to the Boquillas Canyon. There were some really cool plants down by the Rio Grande. I especially loved this yellow flowering tree. 

 Us and the Rio Grande. Not so grande by the time it goes through Big Bend. 

 Then we hiked the lost mine trail which was a grueling 3.5 miles to this view.

 Our last hike of the day was Santa Elena Canyon. Then we cooked up some chili and tried not to attract the javelinas.

 An example of light painting. I was inside the tent twirling around my head lamp and Photographer Phil set the camera to have a long shutter speed. 

Big Bend sunrise. I will take the photo cred for this one. 

 Day 2 began with a hike to Cattail falls. It was a hot hike to a cooler canyon. The falls weren't really falling that day.

 Then we hiked 7 miles on the south rim trail. As the world-class hiker and author Lawrence Parent put it, "The South Rim Trail is probably the classic hike of Texas. Although the trip is fairly strenuous, almost any Texas hiker worth his salt will someday try to hike to the South Rim." We found this view 2 minutes away from our campsite. We cooked dinner here and enjoyed the sunset.

 Me in the tree.

 Phil pondering the Chisos mountains and being a stud again by carrying almost all the gear (the doc told me I shouldn't put a backpack strap around my waist because of baby). After we summited Emery Peak and hiked back to relative civilization we left Big Bend and went on to the next adventure.

Along the highway to Marfa (FM 147 River Road) we found this gem of a picnic area. There are picnic tables under those teepees. 

To the left: Mexico. Center: Phil. Center back: Rio Grande. Right: USA 

The prickly pears were all abloom and beautiful. 

Next stop and next blog post: Marfa, TX.
If you can't stand the suspense apparently they just featured it on 60 minutes. 

2 comments:

  1. This is cute! Sounds fun, and also rather dry. Welcome to desert living!

    ReplyDelete