Location: Seminole Canyon State Park, TX
Last night had one of the most amazing star studded skies I have ever seen. Turns out the MacDonald Observatory, known for the "Star Gazer" Radio Spot, is close by. We woke to beautiful skies and checked the weather for San Antonio. Mmmm - they are forecasting heavy rains and lots of lightening. Our original plan was to see LBJ's boyhood home and go through Fredericksburg. It didn't sound like much fun in torential rain and I'm loving this hot weather so we looked at the forecast in other places and saw that Big Bend National Park had great weather and wasn't too far out of our way. (What's a couple of hundred miles if you're driving about 10,000 miles on the trip?) Big Bend it is! The drive from Balmorhea to Big Bend was spectacular. Lots of wildflowers and green mountains. I was particularly impressed with the fields of blooming Torrey yucca. The mult-colored wildflowers with the mountains in the background made this a fun drive. What a pleasant surprise.
Big Bend National Park took us by surprise. I was expecting something along the lines of Death Valley with bleak big mountains. Instead we were greeted by tons more wildflowers, an incredible mountain range with long vistas, butterflies, birds and cicadas that were deafening. This place is a lot more buzzing than I thought. We stopped by the Visitor Center at Chisos Basin and talked with the ranger. Turns out that Big Bend has received more rain this year since 1986. They too are impressed with the wildflowers and greenery.
An interesting fact I learned about Big Bend is that it's a seasonal National Park, but opposite of the typical parks. Here their big season is in the winter. Most of the Visitor's Centers in the park are closed in the summer. Turns out they get very few visitors during the scorching months of the summer. The Lodge is circa 1950 and is nothing like the Great Lodges of the West/Pacific Northwest. It does have a nice view overlooking the valley though.
Here's Ned standing on the patio of the lodge with "The Window" (a view of the basin below) in the background.
We decided to keep exploring the park. Since we've seen the poor Rio Grande River struggling to stay alive in New Mexico we were curious what it looked like here. Our first stop in search of the Rio was Rio Grande Village. We drove around the campground, which was labeled as having river access, and no luck. Not to be deterred we drove to the Rio Grande Overlook. Donde esta el Rio?
Next stop in search of the Rio was Banquillas Crossing, which indeed is a U.S. Port of Entry. Here's a pic of the U.S. Port of Entry building with a Mexican village in the background. Donde esta el Rio?
Here's Ned hanging out with Winnie, scalding his hand while he waits for me to take the shot. Sorry babe, my bad. We're still in search of the Mighty Rio.
Next stop was the farthest point on the map. Finally, on a desolate road in 101 degrees "Ay Caramba, aqui esta El Rio!' (apologies to all my Spanish speaking friends for my lame attempts at Spanish). At Banquillas Canyon Overlook we finally spotted the mighty Rio. The river appeared to be 50 ft. across and easy to wade through. We were undewhelmed. I should say we only spotted about half a dozen cars on the road during this whole adventure. And yes, the Visitor Center at this location is in fact closed for the season.
We drove out of the park on the Eastern side headed for Marathon. Yikes, what a difference. This drive was incredibly more bleak, very flat and no flowers. Several hours later we crossed over the Pecos River, that feeds into the Rio Grande. At first glance it looks impressive, but it's very shallow and turns into a 10 ft. wide stream. We stopped at an unused U.S. Recreational Area to get a better look. There were several abandoned buildings with broken glass windows, a ghost campground, but a bathroom that still worked - sort of. This place was so creepy!
After a really long day, we finally arrived at Seminole Canyon Campground at 7:30. We're camped at the top of a hill that overlooks the desert and supposedly the Rio Grande. We just spoke with the campground host and she says there's a trail that will in fact take us to the Rio Grande. We have our sights set on that trail first thing tomorrow!
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