Big Bend

On our way South from Study Butte.

We hiked the Lost Mine trail in Big Bend and the mine is still lost.

Lunch at 7500 ft.

There are 24 mountain lions in this park.  Can you see the one in this picture?

I got right carried away with pictures here, but it's so beautiful.

Where Tori and I are is a little edgy.

A little song and dance.

In the 1920's a farmer planted cotton right along the Rio Grande and this machine was part of running his cotton gin to separate out the seeds to make bails of clean cotton. Ruins like those below are strewn throughout this park.

This is St. Helena canyon, one of our favourite places in the park.

You can easily wade across the Rio Grande into Mexico here, but it's against the law, so we just threw rocks into Mexico.

Up in this part of the canyon the echos are incredible.  I let out my best yodel, and a lady who I didn't know was there got startled quite badly.  She was a good sport about it though, and after that it was hard to get the kids to stop yelling.  Jake was just trying to make scary canyon sounds.
This place feels like your in an Old West  movie.

The Mule Ears. End of day one.

Day two started with a lesson on weather from Gail.

We finally got to see another kind of cactus than prickly pear.  James saw a prickly pear without any prickles so he decided to grab a leaf off and chuck it at one of us to scare us.  He quickly learned about blind pear,  which has thousands of tiny prickles which you can see better once they're causing the pain in your fingers.  He paid for that failed prank for about the next 7 hours.

I don't know what this cactus is, but James did not grab it.

At Boquillas Canyon the local Mexicans cross over to leave stuff for us to buy by leaving our money.  A nice walking stick is only $6.  Needless to say I was nearly tempted beyond what I'm able to take them all and make a huge profit selling them again.

On the path down to the Hot Springs.

We should have come to the 105 F pool earlier.  This morning the air was near freezing, but by noon it's about 85 F today.  Yvette didn't want me to dip into the Rio Grande because of the microorganisms in the water, but I jumped in anyway, and I just promised not to get any in my mouth.  James jumped in too, and neither of us got sick.

We've been asked to pray for rain in this parched land.  they need it desperately.

It's strange to think we are at the turn around point on our trip.  Now it's to head East again.

....We never saw the mountain lion either.