Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 - Big Bend National Park - Walking in the Grapevine Hills.

I arose early and slipped out of the trailer to take some early morning pictures of whatever flora and fauna I could find. I surprised a Great Blue Heron fishing just beside the boardwalk over the pond. He jumped up on the boardwalk and was ready to fly away, but I froze and he just sat there while I took his picture. Not wanting to disturb his breakfast, I turned around to go back to the campground. On the road there I disturbed a roadrunner, the quintessential bird of the desert southwest. Come to think of it, the previous day we had also seen Wile E. Coyote (or his relative) slinking across the parking lot by the showers. I can't prove it, of course, because we had driven over there to take a shower and taking a camera with to take a shower just didn't occur to either of us. I mean, "camera" + "water" = "Bad Thing" in my book, wouldn't you agree? The net result was that we didn't have the camera and stood looking at each other as the coyote calmly walked right by us, drat it!

Deciding to walk in a different area of the park, we drove north from the Chisos Mountains into the Grapevine Hills area along a passable dirt road. At the end of the road we hiked a trail up a dry wash to a formation called Window Rock. Although walking in the deep gravel and sand of the wash was quite difficult, the spectacular rock formations all around us more than made up for it. Rocks were carved, split, and balanced on end in very unusual ways.

The last part of the trail was almost a rock scramble up the side of the arroyo to the Window Rock formation. What we found when we got there was a truly huge, lozenge-shaped boulder perched on top of two other big boulders that jutted up into the sky. To me it looked more like a door than a window, but it certainly was one huge gaping hole whatever you call it. It's amazing that something like that would ever happen purely by chance, but Mother Nature surely has astounding surprises when you poke around a bit.

After our walk, we drove back to Rio Grande Village for lunch in the trailer. Baby was almost totally discharged, so I plugged it into the shaver outlet in the men's bathroom and then kept an eye on it while we had lunch. We had been camping without electricity for several days, and our various battery-powered devices were starting to run out of juice. Monika used the outlet in the women's bathroom a few times to recharge the camera batteries, but apparently the camp hostess caught wind of that because Monika found the charger unplugged when she finally went to retrieve it.

That afternoon we drove the short distance over to the entrance to Boquillas Canyon. Boquillas Canyon is apparently the longest of the three Rio Grande canyons in Big Bend park, but it does not have any rapids to speak of, according to a Ranger I talked to. Once again, we could only hike a short distance into the canyon before the walls closed in and prevented us from going any further, but it was surely beautiful. The walls of Boquillas Canyon seemed more weathered than Santa Elena canyon, and so the opening had more of a "U" shape to it than "V" shape. Although less dramatic, I could also well imagine that Boquillas Canyon would be a bit lighter and have a more open feeling than Santa Elena, but once again we will have to bring Mutt and Jeff and try our luck at rafting through the canyon next time.

I was getting tired after the second walk of the day, but Monika convinced me to take a final walk that afternoon along the Strawhouse Trail. We followed a rocky, ancient streambed in about a mile and found the remains of an old cable car system that transported ore from Mexico to the U.S. side for refining. The first wooden tower we found had completely collapsed over the intervening decades since the park was established, but the dry desert air had preserved the old cable and the supporting wheels perfectly. The second tower we found was leaning over precariously but still somewhat upright and from it we could get a better idea how the towers might have looked when the whole thing was operating.

Returning to camp for the evening, neither of us had much energy so we just had a simple, quick dinner. I was completely bushed after three walks, so I put my feet up on the couch and read a bit. Monika still had some energy, so she decided to check out what nice views might be awaiting her at the pond during another gorgeous sunset. After she returned we read together a bit and then turned in for the night.