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.

Fort Davis and McDonald Observatory

We got to play some ball with new friends.  It was like having a regular PE class with a swim to finish, and then off to Fort Davis.

In the Davis mountains we can drive on the highest paved road in Texas, at 6500ft.  The hiking was beautiful and right outside our door.

The trees are mostly for my mom's sake, but I like them too.

 The McDonald Observatory has about 5 domes with the big scopes plus lots of other scopes.

This one is 107 inches across the lens.  It is number 37 on the size list in the world.  It weighs 160 tons and the movable dome over it weighs 409 tons, and

......each of the kids got to take a turn moving them with electronics.  This is Judy, the amazing tour guide.

This is the dome we were in.

 

 This one is called the Hobby-Eberley scope and it is number 5 on the largest in the world list.  We are at about 6600 ft so there is less atmosphere and pollution to block good star gazing.  Also 2 out of 3 nights are cloudless in the Davis mountains.

 We came back for the star party, which was amazing.  The most amazing part to me is how anyone could look at the heavens as their job, and try to insist how it can all be without God.  The favourite sight we saw out of seven scopes tonight was the Orion Nebula where new stars are being formed.  I said to the telescope operator, "Did you know God's word says he speaks these things into existence?  It's amazing to be hearing God's voice with our eyes."  She never said anything.

What we actually saw was more blue than this and further away, but just as awe inspiring.

This is the sundial that we wish we got a picture of during the day.  It doesn't work that well after sunset.

Palm tree on a post.

These are all over the Chihuahua High Desert.

 We saw lots of cool stuff on a trail ride including this cactus tree.

 We all got in trouble from the x marine boss on this ride, but none as much as me. (Janna never got in trouble).  I rode at the back and stopped a couple times allowing gunner to run to catch up.  When we got near the barn I went for one more quick run to pass the others, but this time General Trail Leader caught me and let me know in no uncertain terms, how unsafe a practice this was......then he took this picture for us.

Tori rode Red, and they got along well.

Off to Big Bend next.

Balmorhea and San Solomon Spring

A few blowout pictures just because...

Hey!  Not bad.  It's only flat on one side....

..this side.

We got it back good enough to travel.

Left too long to themselves and our kids always revert to honking the trucks.

The best honker came from a truck like this one.  It was carrying a nascar from Daytona to Arizona, where the next big race is.  These guys drive 10 months of the year on a circuit to all the races.

Here's another reason God is good.  If I didn't need to change the tire, I wouldn't have noticed that the spare under the trailer was only being held up by three screws instead of four, so one of its frame pieces was hanging down a bit.  If that tire broke free at 70mph we could have had a lot more damage than we got.  Thanks to some friendly neighbours at this park, it's all fixed now.

This is the same hill from far and then close. 

The channel that runs behind our campsite carries water from this pool at 1 million gallons per hour.

The water is crystal clear and fed by an artesian well.  It's 75 F, which felt a little cool today as it was about 82 here.

A fish pedicure.  That's a catfish in the middle.

Style....

....No style....

...style