Big Bend National Park

Well, well, what to say about Big Bend. It's a little bit like climbing Long's Peak. It was good to go see, I'm glad I did it, but I'll not be in a rush to go back again. Don't get me wrong, Big Bend was a very impressive place - for the effort of getting there though, the ROI might not be high enough. Perhaps a little earlier in the year when it is cooler would be a bit better, with some more wildflowers.

Over 3 days, we explored around three of the major areas of Big Bend. The Rio Grande on the east and west sides, and the central Chisos mountains. We took a moonlit hike down to the Rio Grande, a long hike in the mountains, followed by a dip in the natural hot springs, and explored inside the Santa Elena Canyon on the west side of the park. On the east side, we got to see a great sunrise, and a neat pond on the side of the river. Things are pretty green in the river basin. The mountain hike was a good long one (8.5 miles) and the scenery was pretty good. At one point though, Heather and I were noticing that the mountainside flora was very reminiscent of other places we'd been - spurring her to jokingly say: "We came all this way to go hiking in Southern California?!"

I think the west side was the highlight of the experience for me. Santa Elena canyon is a 1500 ft high narrow canyon carved by the Rio Grande river. With enough pre-planning, people can get permits to raft/kayak down the canyon, including some nasty looking rapids (this might be one of the only things to bring me back here...) It's really neat and spurred a lot of picture-taking. The river was shallow enough that we waded across and I gave "Mi Tierra" a hug on the other side. Soon afterward we saw the mystery river-monster of the Rio Grande, otherwise known as a large fish/eel like thing we saw slowly wiggling through the shallows, which then suddenly thrashed noisily away in a 10ft long ribbon of a splash. One the way out, we also saw a beaver! Other personal first-ever sightings during the visit included a gray fox, a vermillion fly-catcher, and a yellow-necked woodpecker.

The other thing that struck me during the visit was how laughably easy it is to cross the Rio Grande down there. The river is little more than a creek, and we saw several places where Mexicans hang out in ramshakle shelters across the river to sell souveniers to the tourists. One fellow ever regularly crosses the river to sit by a trail and serenade passing hikers. There is nothing clandestine about it - I even saw an inflatable raft sitting 10 yds from the river in plain view. Now, I don't mind all this, and my prevailing thought about the whole thing was that it is kind of silly, that this little stream, which really represents an idea of an obstacle more than anything, can be such a significant division between peoples. Across 20ft and 2 ft of slow moving water, and all of a sudden, the language and money is different, the water is non-potable, and everybody looks at you like you are an invader/alien? What an artificial and absurd situation it is.

Enough blathering - we had great fun, and I'll be chewing on the pictures I took for some time - here's some that are presentable now...