The Savage Traveler: Winter Trip 2015: Rio Grande Village at Big Bend National Park

Windmill at Dugout Wells (See Tue. description)

Large cactus in the sunshine (See Tue. description)

Prickly Pear at Dugout Wells (See Tue. description)

The desert in bloom (See Tue. description)

Backlit Rainbow Cactus (See Tue. description)

Driving into the low cloud bank of Monday evening

Rain in the desert

Wed. Feb. 4: This was our big day for hiking. It was cloudy and misty when we got up, with temperatures in the fifties. Marv and I rode our bikes to Ann & Shelby’s campsite. As we waited for them, I watched a Ladder-back Woodpecker on the post next to them. We all rode to the Visitor’s Center to get a bit more information and to watch the video about the park. Then we biked to the Daniel’s Farm site and down to the Rio Grande for Ann’s first sighting of the river. It is not very wide along this stretch and they were surprised at its modest size. Outside the park, between El Paso and Presidio, Mexico, it is considered a dry stream, sapped of its water by irrigation and evaporation, but near the park’s border it gets volume from Mexico’s Rio Conchos. We left the bikes at the Trailhead and hiked partway up the Trail to Hot Springs, to an overlook of the river. We returned to our own campers for lunch, having biked about 5 miles. We picked Robertsons up in the truck and drove to Dugout Wells to do the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Hike and see the remains of a homestead at a desert oasis. By then the skies had cleared and the sun warmed the desert into the seventies. We were seeing more flowers brought out by the sunshine, including small yellow Creosote blooms and yellow Desert Marigolds. Back at the campground we did the Trail across a wetland and up a steep hill to a wonderful overlook where we could see the Rio Grande and the Chisos Mountains to the west, and the Sierra del Carmen Mountains and the small village of Boquillas, Mexico to the east. After dinner and sunset we drove to Panther Junction and just beyond to drive 6.4 rugged miles on unpaved Grapevine Hills Road. As it got darker and the stars came out we took the trail to Balanced Rock watching the light of the rising full moon creep down the steep rocky hillside on our right. We stopped short of the rock as the trail became a matter of scrambling up the boulders to the ridge and we weren’t sure we could see the rock in the dark anyway. By then the full moon had risen above the hillside to our left. We turned around and hiked back, most of the way without flashlights because the moon light was so bright. It was magnificent and we didn’t see another soul the whole way. That was the hike of a lifetime and made an outstanding end to our day.

Boardwalk at the campground nature walk

The Roadrunner was faster than the photographer

A first sighting of the Rio Grande

The Sierra Carmens in Mexico

From a lookout high above the river

Our private campsite at Rio Grande Village

Full moon rising

Can you see Orion, or at least his belt?

Moon shadows

Thu. Feb. 5: This wasn’t quite such a rigorous day. Each couple got up in a leisurely manner. We each happened to have pancakes for breakfast and packed a lunch. Marv and I did dishes, which had started to really pile up. While picking up Ann & Shelby at their campsite we all observed a striking woodpecker with a yellow forehead, red crown, and yellow “mane” that Ann later identified as a Golden Fronted Woodpecker. We drove the short way to Boquillas Canyon overlook to see the vista and then on to Boquillas Canyon Trail. The moderate level 2 mile hike took us up over a hill and down, then along the Rio Grande to the mouth of the canyon. 1300 foot high cliffs towered above us and kept the sun from getting in until about noon. By then we had reached the end of the trail and came back a few hundred feet to a sunny, grassy patch to enjoy our lunches. After returning to the truck we continued north to Hot Springs Trail. The remains of a 1920s-30s resort are there and we looked at the preserved but empty Post Office/Store and 6 unit Motor Court, and a few ancient petroglyphs and pictographs on the cliff, as we hiked to the spring. Only the foundation of the two story bathhouse remains and it had about a dozen people in swimsuits lounging in the 105° water; the brave ones would go over the stone wall to swim in the much cooler Rio Grande. Marv, Ann & I took off our shoes and rolled up our pants to soak our feet while Shelby remained “on shore”, reading until we finished. The day was much cooler than yesterday but when the sun came out it felt quite warm compared to the air temperatures in the high 50s. We were back at the campgrounds by 3:00 so we dropped Ann & Shelb off at their campsite and returned to ours to read and snooze in the sun for an hour or so and then begin packing up to move into Chisos Basin for the weekend. Robertsons joined us at our camper to eat vegetarian chili for dinner and afterwards we walked to the Nature Trail for sunset. On the way we saw a pair of Vermillion Flycatchers. We hiked back up the hill to the overlook just as the sunset. At first it didn’t seem too spectacular but the longer we waited, the more the color came out on the clouds and the high cliffs of the Sierra del Carmen. Back at our camper we played a game of “Golf” (with cards) and did more to get our respective campers ready to move to Chisos Basin the next day.