West Texas

West Texas 

January 27, 2020

To say that Texas is big is an understatement! Texas is huge!!  West Texas goes on for miles with nothing but barren land  punctuated with gates announcing a ranch somewhere down a dirt road or very small towns every hour or so. 

Big Bend National Park itself is larger than the state of Rhode Island. It took us an hour to get to our campground, Rio Grande Village once we got into the park. The park is beautiful.

It has 3 distinct regions; desert, mountain and river and we explored them all in the week we were there. Our campground was near a small pond with Green Heron

ducks and birds and the Rio Grande river was at the end of and nature trail that started near our campsite. We could see across the river into Mexico. 

Sometimes we saw herds of goats across the river and burros. 

In some places the river has dug deep canyons over the centuries  - places like Boquillas Canyon

or Santa Elena Canyon.

 

In the dessert we saw balanced rocks

and Pouroffs that only have water during rain storms. 

We saw ruins of old homesteads. It is hard to imagine how anyone lived out there in all that loneliness.

The Chiso Mountains in the middle of the park are also amazing. So unlike the mountains I am used to, but with many more trees  than the desert areas because of the elevation, We took a hike to The Window - another pour off 

and believe it or not we saw a bear right next to the trail. It was grubbing along the path looking for food and I am not even certain it was aware of us!

Another lovely thing was the sunsets

and sky at night! Being so far away from any city lights the sky is vet dark and you see many more stars than at home.

We left Big Bend and headed east toward Del Rio, Texas. Our first stop was Seminole Canyon State Park and we were able to sign up for the 3 pm Fate Bell Shelter tour. This park is home to some of the best ancient native American pictographs in the U.S. Our guide told us that they think that some of the pictographs are 4,000 years old. It was pretty amazing to see. 

After our tour, we continued on to Amistad National Recreation area on Lake Amistad. 

Lake Amistad is a manmade lake made by damming the Rio Grande River.

It is jointly managed by the United States and Mexico and you can drive to the middle of the dam, park, admire the monument and stand one foot in each country.

We camped at a national park campground on the lake and had a beautiful view of the huge lake. During our 3 day stay at Amistad, we did some hiking both in nearby Del Rio and in the park. We went to the Whitehead Memorial Museum, a rather folksy, eclectic town museum.

I think that anyone in Del Rio who wanted to get rid of something must have given it to the museum, but we had a fun time there and even saw Judge Roy Bean’s tomb! 

Now we are in Laredo, TX.  We are camping at Lake Casa Blana International State Park on the outskirts of town.

We have finally had some warm weather here. It made it into the 80’s!  We have also seen some beautiful birds here. Yesterday we went to the Lamar Vegara Environmental Science Center on the Laredo Community College campus. It is dedicated to the plant and animal life in the Rio Grande watershed. Afterwards we took the Paso del Indio Nature Trail behind the center and saw some beautiful birds including the Green Jay and the Great Kiskadee and beautiful cardinals.

Long Billed Thrasher

Great Kiskadee

Green Jay

Cardinal

This morning we went birding around the park and saw a Vermillion Flycatcher and well as a Least Sandpiper, Black Headed Stilts and a white pelican.

Least Sandpiper

Vermillion Flycatcher

Black Headed Stilts

We have one more night here before we head farther east and south to Falcon Lake State Park.

Now it's off to a library to enter this blog.

On to Texas

Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020

We spent a week in the Phoenix area and enjoyed ourselves very much. The weather was nice and warm (high 60’s, low 70’s) during the day, but went down into the 30’s  at night. Our little furnace and good sleeping bag keeping us nice and warm.  

Monday, January 6, we drove a little ways east to Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park. It is a wonderful place with plants from deserts all over the world. We walked all over the park and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Tuesday, we took a 1 1/2 hour cruise on the Steamship Dolly on Canyon lake about 12 miles east of our campground. It is a manmade lake and has steep rugged shoreline and gorgeous scenery. On this trip we were lucky to see lots of big horned sheep, a bald eagle and water fowl including eared grebes. 

After our cruise, we drove an additional 2 miles to Tortilla Flats, a western tourist town that is lots of fun with a restaurant with dollar bills all over the walls, a band playing and an ice cream shop - very good people watching! 

One day was spent doing errands - laundry and grocery shopping. For those of you from the northwest, we even found a Winco grocery store and stocked up. 

 Our last day in Phoenix, we drove into town and went to the Heard Museum, an excellent museum that celebrates native American art and culture. It is superb. The pottery, silver work, basketry, clothing and kachina dolls were beautiful. We saw a special exhibit about the American Indian boarding school  experience - very sad. We also  saw special exhibits by David Hockney of IPad art he made of Yosemite (unbelievable), and modern art by Maria Hupfield. It is certainly a wonderful museum. 

We also went to the Arizona Capitol Museum which is in the old Arizona capitol 

and is no longer used for government business and the Japanese Friendship Gardens. 

It was a very nice day.

Saturday, we left Phoenix and headed east through some very barren land. We ended up at Pancho Villa State Park near Columbus, New Mexico and 3 miles from the Mexican border. Here in March of 1916, forces led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus. This was the last time the Continental U.S. has been invaded by foreign forces. About 1 month later, General Pershing led a large group of @1,000  troops into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. They were not successful and about a year later returned to Columbus. This was the first military venture that used motor vehicles and Curtis Jenny aircraft for military purposes. The state park has a very nice museum that explains the whole attack and retaliation. 

That afternoon, we drove the 3 miles south to Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico, parked the truck and walked across the border into Mexico. Palomas is most well known for The Pink Store, a very nice craft/souvenir store with a very good restaurant. We had a very nice lunch with margaritas, and purchased a couple of items before walking back to New Mexico. 

Monday was another travel day. We headed east through New Mexico and into Texas at El Paso. We ended the day at Davis Mountain State Park near Fort Davis, Texas. It is a beautiful park situated in a valley in the Davis Mountains some of the highest country in Texas. 

The next morning, we took the 75 mile Davis Mountain Scenic Loop. It is very beautiful country - a very isolated area. 

We went to the University of Texas McDonald Observatory. In the afternoon, we went through their exhibit hall and saw an introductory movie about the observatory and its history. Then we went to a solar viewing (on a screen) and learned all about the sun. Then we had a tour of two of the observatory’s large research telescopes; the Harlan J. Smith and the Hobby-Eberly telescopes. 

It was all very interesting. That evening, we came back for a star party. We learned about a lot of the constellations and then we got to look through six different telescopes at different things in the sky including Uranus, a double star cluster, the Pleiades, the Andromeda Nebula and more. It was a really interesting day. We learned a lot!

Today, Wednesday, we took a bird walk at the state park and then a hike. In the afternoon, we went to nearby Fort Davis National Historic Site. 

The fort was  a key post in the defense system of West Texas from 1854 - 1891. It protected emigrants, mail, etc on the San Antonio to El Paso Road. Much of the fort was restored, and we walked all around it and went in the buildings whenever we could. It was very interesting.

Tomorrow, it is on to Big Bend National Park!