My Dad, my girlfriend and I just got back from a great trip to Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park.

We left Austin Friday morning 5/12 after loading up Susan's Toyota Land Cruiser with a lot more food and supplies than we'd ultimately use. I was in a little too much of a hurry to get to Sarah's Cafe in Fort Stockton in time for lunch and got a speeding ticket outside of Sonora. Now I get to do the Defensive Driving thing again. It's been about six years so I guess I was overdue. Oh well, lunch was muy bueno. We had to detour through Alpine and Study Butte as the road to Marathon was closed due to wildfires.

We got into the park around 5:30 and had time to set up camp before hiking down the Window Trail to watch the sunset. Just like the last time I was there, I had to sprint up the Oak Springs trail cutoff to get up on the rim before the sun went down. I hope the pictures come out. Evidently I didn't effectively communicate to Susan what I was up to as she was somewhat upset (make that very upset) that I ran off and left her. She caught up to me in time to catch most of the sunset. Visibility in the park was somewhat obscured by haze during the week we were there. It's hard to say how much was from the wildfires and how much was pollution from the power plants in Mexico. Very depressing to compare the air quality and visibility to what it was ten years ago. We also had a fair amount of wind the first two nights we camped out, with the temperature dropping to 70 or lower.

Saturday morning we headed out for an all-day hike to the South Rim. We decided to tackle the steepest part of the trail first and headed up through the Pinnacles, stopping to feed a few Mexican Bluejays along the way. They would come down and grab crackers from your hand. I know you're not supposed to feed the wildlife but I don't think the birds will forget how to eat on their own. Just before we reached the pass, Susan had an encounter with some overly friendly bees. I don't what it was that they liked so much about her socks, but she was most unhappy when one decided to crawl down inside her boot. I was able to get it out and all involved survived intact, if not a bit frazzled. We had considered going to the top of Emory Peak as well but that would have added another 2 miles (and over 800 vertical feet) to our hike. As it was, we covered almost 13 miles and were out for 9 hours. We saw lots of birds, a couple of whitetail deer, and lots of fantastic scenery. Boot Canyon made for a great spot to take a break, with lots of shade. Susan decided that the "boot" rock formation looked more like a bunny rabbit. The views from the South Rim were spectacular, although long distance visibility was limited by the haze. There were quite a few people on the trail as well. We saw at least 20 other people. That's crowded by Big Bend standards. The last few miles were a little tough on the toes as it was mostly downhill. Had we added on the Emory Peak climb, we might have been a little tired at the end of the day. We had supper at the lodge dining room before getting cleaned up and going to bed.

The next morning we drove out of the basin into the desert floor and hiked the Chimneys Trail. It was a nice flat walk for about 3 miles out to some cool rock formations with some Indian pictographs and stone shelters. It got a little warm on the hike out but carrying a small spray bottle with water helped keep us from overheating. We didn't see too much wildlife, other than the occasional lizard, bird, and insect. The only snake we saw the entire trip was in the middle of a road. I guess they were too smart to venture out in the heat.

After the Chimneys Trail, we stopped by the Tuff Canyon overlook. We decided it was too hot to try the short hike down into it. We continued on to Santa Elena Canyon, where it was only 105 degrees, give or take a few. We followed that up with a relatively short hike to the Burro Mesa Pouroff, a waterfall (which was dry) at the end of a box canyon. It was pretty warm by this time and Susan didn't seem to care for the heat very much. Her sunburn from the day before probably didn't help. The mist from my spray water bottle provided minimal relief at that point. She was quite happy that we were spending the night in a room at the lodge that night. That provided a most welcome shower, not to mention air conditioning. Dad and I went to supper at the lodge while she took a long shower and cooled off. We brought her back some ice cream for dessert.

The following day we had breakfast at the lodge and then drove down to Boquillas Canyon. I was able to talk Susan into climbing up the sand slide with me. It's a large sand dune at the side of the canyon that's somewhere between 60 and 100 feet high and is pretty steep. When it came time to run down it, she fell after a few steps, blaming it on trying to keep up with my long-legged strides. Dad stayed down at the bottom taking pictures. After emptying most of the sand from our shoes, we spent a while skipping rocks across the Rio Grande. On the way out, we stopped by the Rio Grande Village store for some cool drinks and to wash off some more sand.

That afternoon we had our best hike of the trip. We put the 4WD to good use and drove down a narrow and bumpy dirt road to the Pine Canyon Trail. It was a beautiful hike that started in the sotol grasslands and went up into a secluded canyon full of pine, oak, and madrone trees, along with lots of shrubs and other green stuff. We saw evidence of bears (claw marks on trees) but weren't fortunate enough to see one. The waterfall at the end was dry, as expected since it had been a while since they'd had any rain. It drops about 200 feet from the eastern edge of the Chisos Mountains. The contrast between the desert floor at the beginning of the hike and the lush vegetation at the end was amazing. Well worth the bumpy ride to get there.

We camped out that night again up in the basin. It was quite a bit warmer (around 80) than the previous nights. Had we camped down closer to the river at either Rio Grande Village or the Cottonwoods Campground near Castolon we would have been way too hot. We also had a middle-of-the-night encounter outside the bathroom with a vinegaroon, which Susan mistook for a scorpion. Better that than the skunk we occasionally smelled around the campground area.

The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast at the lodge before heading off to check out the Big Bend Ranch State Park. We stopped off at the Terlingua General Store for some shopping, then continued on to Lajitas. After checking in at the Barton Warnock Center in Lajitas, we got a motel room for the night. After making sure the A/C worked, we got back in the truck and headed down the scenic highway along the river to the park entrance. The dirt road into the park was 35 miles long and was quite bumpy as well. The land inside the park is incredibly desolate. Lots of volcanic rocks, cactus, yucca, etc. We stopped by the Sauceda ranch house but nobody was around. The whole park seemed deserted. I was a little disappointed in the view of the Solitario, a unique (and huge) geological formation. It may be that it's just too big to see from the ground. On the way out we did a short hike up a canyon to a spring (Ojito Adentro). Again, an amazing contrast to see lush green vegetation in the middle of dry barren land. Susan and Dad decided not to fight their way through the poison oak on the last part of the trail to the spring so I continued on by myself. As I got to the spring and waterfall, I was surprised by a duck that took off before I could get the camera out. He sure was a long way from the river and didn't seem too happy to see me. The pool of water he had been swimming in sure looked inviting. After driving back to Lajitas, we had a great dinner at the Badlands Hotel restaurant.

The next day, we headed back to the Ranch to try the Rancherias Canyon Trail. This turned out to be "The Hike to Hell and Back." We got to the trailhead a little before 8:00AM. The trail heads up a canyon for 4.8 miles and supposedly ends in a box canyon with a waterfall. The trail winds along the canyon floor for most of the way, with lots of uneven rocks. Very difficult to hike with any kind of pace. The trail was not consistently marked and was at times very hard to follow. There were rock cairns supposedly marking the trail but we often went long stretches without seeing any. There was an enormous amount of cane underbrush that we had to fight through. A couple of miles into the canyon we came across a spring that was overgrown with brush, including some more poison oak. The "trail" then continued for a couple of more hours up the canyon. We had decided to make 12:00 our turnaround time. We went a little past that time but were still not within sight of the end. Since we were already starting to run low on water and Gatorade, we headed back. As we got to the aforementioned spring, Susan spotted a Javelina carcass next to the trail that had not been there when we were there earlier. It looked like it had been dead a few days and had been dragged there. Our guess was that there was a mountain lion about. We picked up the pace and about 20 minutes later, Susan spotted "something large" behind a large boulder. We're not sure what it was, but it was big enough to kick up a cloud of dust when it left. We tossed a few rocks over and made a lot of noise before I ventured around the corner to see if it was clear. It was. A little while later we surprised three wild bighorn sheep at another spring. They bounded noisily up the cliff wall before stopping to pose for a picture or two. The rest of the hike out kept getting hotter and hotter. At one point, Susan amused herself by tossing rocks at me. Fortunately for me, her arm was still sore from the rock-skipping episode earlier in the week. She still had enough energy to sprint the last 50 yards back to the truck. All told, we were on the trail for about 8 hours. There's no telling how many miles we covered as we zigzagged quite a bit trying to find the trail. Next time, we'll try this hike in the winter. It was still fun, in a masochistic kind of way, but ended up being much more dangerous that we had predicted.

That evening we stopped in Lajitas to hit some of the stores, then headed to Marathon, where we spent the night at the Gage Hotel. Dad and I tried out the pool while Susan enjoyed a long shower. Dinner at the Cafe Cenizo restaurant was excellent. Our room was great, with lots of western and Mexican artifacts/decorations. Breakfast Thursday morning was equally good.

On our way home, we visited the Confederate Air Force Museum in Midland, before spending the night at my Grandmother's house in Abilene. The next morning, we had rain and some hail as we drove back to Austin. I'm glad it didn't hit while we were camping out.

All in all, it was a great trip. We'd all like to do it again, only when the weather's a bit cooler. Or as Susan would say, "maybe....IN THE DEAD OF WINTER!!!"