climbing up to look down
Big Bend National Park, TX
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Our most southern and least visited park, Big Bend is, to put it simply, breathtaking. The scope, scale, and vistas are mind boggling, other-worldly, and yet as simple as mountains, chaparrals, and mesas can be. Photos can not do it justice. You have to stand there, so small surrounded by its vastness, and breath in each spectacular view.
Driving along high desert plains surrounded by row after row of mountain ranges that each reach ever further into the distance is scenery that plays with your sense of distance/space….. Is that one range? Two? Oh no, it’s three or four stacked so neatly that they appear as one. It is only through the course of watching the light traverse across the huge sky and the shadows of the clouds upon the ridges that one can actually discern that there are layers to each vista.
across the expanse of over 800,000 acres!
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That is the quiet miracle presented to you on the horizontal plane … and yet there is also the same miracle to the vertical. As you drive through this area of SW Texas you feel/think you are close to sea level - flat, even chaparrals that stretch forever on all sides …… but, no. Although there are mountains and mesas towering high above you, as you enter the park and head south there are basins and ravines that drop below the road. My sense of where we were and what to expect just kept changing at every turn.
Unsettling, yet kind of fantastic!
The Rio Grande
Big Bend National Park
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The Rio Grande, snaking its way along the edge of the park, separates the US from Mexico. We hiked two different trails that took us both high above the river and then down to its shore. Both sides of the Rio Grande are protected areas and we could see, and say hello, to people, horses and burros along the Mexican side. It was very close. The best trail was the Boquillas Canyon trail, a slot canyon carved over thousands of years! To stand there at the edge of the river with the canyon towering above us ….. miraculous and humbling. We were alone down there - no sound but the moving river. Time.
Boquillas Canyon - walking in
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Boquillas Canyon - looking out
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Boquillas Canyon - looking in
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The day time temperatures were very warm, averaging @ 70 degrees and full sun. After hiking in the afternoon it was so pleasant to sit outside and read while watching the sun set in the west. However, once that sun set …. the temps dropped quickly and nights were @ 30 degrees. And yet… the nights….. if there was ever a miracle, it is the night sky! I have NEVER seen anything like the night sky here!!! It was as if we were sleeping in a planetarium. The stars were SO big, SO close, and came all the way down to the horizon! And… FYI, Mars is kind of amazing - it is really, really red and really, really distinct! I have never seen so many stars and I probably never will again. I will carry this image with me forever.
A roadrunner!
Unfortunately you can't see its amazing colorations!!
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And on a political note - I’m sure glad we got to see it before the wall goes up!
souvenirs on the path
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the POD waits ... anticipating our next stop
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