Ok, we're almost home, i promise.
After we saw the marfa mystery lights, dealt with the fact that there were no active atm's in the tri-county area, and heard radio stations from all over the country, we went to sleep in our little tent at fort davis.
we brushed our teeth outside the tent, and at 4am, the javelinas were back to eat our spit. they are disgusting animals. eww, sick out.
we woke up bright and early (super early-- like 8am) and began drinking water for our venture to big bend. big bend may be my new favorite place in the universe. if the ocean were on the other side of boquillas canyon (i'll post a picture soon), i would move there. seriously. big bend is amazing. you should go to the national park website and read all about it. then you should make a reservation to stay and hike and take me with you. we would have a very good time.
after "the hike that never ended", we were a little worried about dehydration. so before we ever left fort davis, we started drinking water. and we drank water. and we drank water. and we drank some more water. and pretty soon, i had to adjust the seat in my car because i'd started to grow a hump... not really, but we did have to pull over once and pee by some rancher's mailbox. it was kind of fun.
we saw several mountain ranges before we entered the park. they were amazing, but nowhere near as exciting as the ones inside the park. we stopped at the entrance to big bend, which is right outside terlingua and took a nice little photo by the gate...and it's a good thing we didn't get arrested, that's all i have to say about that.
panther junction is the name of the park headquarters, and we stopped there to refill our water bottles (bad, bad idea. i should have used the water we brought in the car, but no... i had to use the park water.) and buy patches at the park store. we also read about the native wild life and figured out what trail we were going to hike, etc. in reading about the native wild life, kk learned that javelina (also known as the collared peccary) are not at all closely related to pigs, but are much more closely related to hippopotomi. go figure. so, being full of well water and having our patches from the park store, we set off for boquillas canyon, at the very southern end of the park.
boquillas canyon was carved by the rio grande and is one of the (illegal) ways you can cross into mexico from the state park. it also has a short in-out hiking trail down to the river (1.4 miles round-trip) that we thought we would take. it's also right by the hot springs--yay. we pulled into the parking lot of the trail head, visited the restroom (affectionately nicknamed "the hotbox" by yours truly--ask me why and i'll tell you later) and headed off on the trail. all i can say is that that hike was the hottest, sweatiest 1.4 miles i have ever hiked in my whole life. all three of us were drenched half way up the slope. we decided that we were not going to visit the hot springs on this trip, since we'd pretty much created our own. that, coupled with the fact that the temperature was about 250 in the shade made us not want to sit in hot water for fun.
we finished our hike in record time and headed back to the middle of the park to see big bend's highest peak (emory peak), in the chisos mountain range. on the way back to the chisos range, we ran into some interesting wildlife. i'll include a picture in the picture post--you'll love it. we drove up and up and up and the air kept getting cooler and cooler and cooler and the buick kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter, so we rolled the windows down and drove extra slow. i'm sure the people behind us just LOVED that. sorry, guys. at any rate, we stayed at the chisos mountain lodge for a big chunk of the afternoon, letting our car and ourselves cool off. and we saw the same family from the balmoreah pool that we had also seen at dinner the night before. we were totally being stalked. either that or we just kept going to the same places. it could go either way.
we drove out of the park and headed back toward alpine. alpine is a lovely little town with a funny little radio station that reminded me of the radio station in brady. they were doing some random news report about a city council meeting and appropriations for the city pool. derkirita and kk both grew up in very big cities, so they got a big kick out of the "news". while in alpine, and while we still had half a cell phone signal, i called momma so she would know we hadn't died in big bend and to tell her our plans for the next day. we also took the "in town" opportunity to buy some beer. thank G-d for beer. from alpine, we headed back toward marfa-- mostly to eat at dairy queen, but also to see the thunderbird motel and hoping to catch a glimpse of the hottie we saw checking into room 25 the night before. we saw an antelope on the side of the road, and i pulled over to take a picture of it. i don't think the people behind me were amused in the least. but we got a good shot. the dairy queen was a hit, but the hottie was a miss. 50% was ok with us, because we had beer to drink at the campsite. did i thank G-d for beer, yet?
we got back to fort davis in record time and proceeded to barbeque the rest of the peeps, even though we were still mostly full from our DQ run. the peeps, again, were glorious, and we all managed to not burn our fingers again. we had secret happy hour with the beer we bought in alpine. it was lovely. and we went to sleep under the big sky for the last time. and while i was sad our vacation was winding to an end, i was also a little bit excited about sleeping in my bed the next night.
we got up a decent hour, broke camp, cleaned up, ate a bagel, and drove back to balmoreah to finish our swim in the world's largest spring fed outdoor pool, since our first trip had gotten cut short by the hail. it was glorious, again. and the extra good part, aside from no longer being stalked by the suspiciously cute family, was that the high dive was open. all three of us jumped and made big splashes. all three of us were incredibly annoyed by the troupe of junior high kids who showed up and took over the high dive. we continued to swim and lay out and say tacky things about other people's children. it was a good time.
at around 1pm, we decided it was time to head east and face the music of the real world. we made it home to austin by 7pm, had incredible mexican food and margaritas and talked about how much fun we had had, and how we needed to do this every year. it was a great trip. i can imagine that the davis mountains haven't seen the last of rachel, derkirita, or kk.
thanks for reading. hope you like the pictures-- they are kind of awful, but hopefully derkirita will email me some of hers, and i can pretend like i'm actually a good photographer.
mil besos--rmg
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