Church, Sam Nail & Ward Spring

Attended church at the Chisos Basin Amphitheater this morning, had a burger & got groceries in Study Butte, then had a couple of beautiful little hikes at the  old Sam Nail ranch and Ward Spring in the park.

All that's left of a little shed.

The windmill still working.

The not so working windmill.

Just a few moments with the breeze, autumn leaves and a squeaky windmill . . .

Chisos view from Sam Nail ranch.

Dikes are molten material that oozed up through geologic faults. Harder than the surrounding terrain, they remain standing as if marching across the land while surrounding earth wears away over time.

Up, up I go.

The Dikes

Autumn at Ward Spring

Ah, like all those with curly hair I bet it wishes it had straight instead. LOL

Water bug at Ward Spring

Yucca in bloom roadside neat Castolon. No other that I've seen, so maybe this one is forging new territory or a new time of year to bloom. :-)

The sweet mares. Three more in next pen. All will go to auction tomorrow.

Starry, Balmy Night

Just a short entry tonight. My long entry just got wiped out when I leaned on my touchpad. Grrrrrr!!! So I learned how to disable the stupid touchpad on my laptop. Ha!

The last two mornings the temperature has been 25 so I am surprised that tonight it is about 60 with a gentle breeze and a bright Milky Way. All this week each day has been magnificently beautiful & sunny with temps in the 70s.

Today six birders and I almost saw a javelina kill a camper's pet dog when it got loose and chased after the javelina. One of their other 4 dogs began barking too, but did not get loose, and I think that is what saved the doggie. It is pretty amazing to see such a ferocious, swift attack and I am certain that if the javelina had not been distracted the dog would have been dead within a few seconds.

Every day I can hear the gentle sounds of life across the border - an occasional car motor, the whinnying of horses and the lowing of cattle. At night I love to see the yellow street lights glowing on the other side of the river and smell the wood smoke from the fires used to heat the homes. (Santa Elena has electricity from the US installed before the Sierra Club found out! Boquillas, the Mexican town across the river on the east side of the park was not as fortunate.) In its heyday there were approximately 200 people living there and rangers say there are perhaps only 50 people now.

The Rio Grande winds around so much that it is literally a few yards from the campground, but less than a half mile away the abandoned road to the old crossing to Santa Elena is nearly a mile long. I explored it the day before yesterday.

The former road is now choked with mesquite and Russian Thistle (in invasive plant species). There is a second gate that I did not photograph that is nearly completely buried by the sand dunes. The border crossings have been closed since shortly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. Floods in 2008 buried the floodplain , changing the topography significantly and wiping out about half the Cottonwood Campground, Rio Grande Campground on the east side of the park as well as several backcountry campsites along the river.

I think I am spelling this correctly: Cerro Castolon, the mountain landmark in this area with the old military installation  in the foreground as seen from the old road. This area is now our visitor center, camp & gift store, law enforcement offices, etc. The campground and our RV area are in a very low area a little more than a half mile away from here.

Zuni and Tighe - the peaceful duo caught napping when I got home from my hike.

Crash Landing, Thanksgiving Rush & Javelina Invasion!

So much has happened in the last few weeks that it is hard to know where to begin! First, I've got a mild case of shingles! Not only had I contracted the chicken pox as a child but I took medical advice and got my shingles vaccination 2 years ago. About a week before Thanksgiving I started having deep pain along my back and ribs and kept wondering what I had done that might have caused such painful bruising. (Without the black & blue.)

The night before Thanksgiving I started breaking out with the classic itchy, burning, purplish clusters of bumps and did some research on the Mayo Health site. Mayo says the vaccination only protects 49% of the population but I am extremely glad I had the vaccination as people who get shingles post-vaccination have much milder cases. Not feeling 100% quite yet - just tired and going to take a nap after I finish this! Just one of the joys of modern maturity! Okay, now I'll quit talking about the yukky stuff.

The week before Thanksgiving there was a lot of radio chatter regarding Incident Command, FAA out of Albuquerque, west side rangers responding, etc. Come to find out a former park ranger, Marcos Paredes, now retired, who flies a plane and gives sight seeing tours of the park had crash landed in the wilderness out past Terlingua Abajo. Fortunately neither he nor his 2 clients were injured and were able to walk out from the landing site. The park is now evaluating how the airplane can be extracted with minimal damage to park resources. It is cost-prohibitive for the pilot to hire a skycrane and motorized vehicles are normally not an option, so it will be interesting to see what plan is agreed upon.

Our little Cottonwood Campground filled up several days starting about a week before Thanksgiving when a group of outdoors women came into our side of the park for a couple of days before heading up to the Chisos Basin. Everyone was incredulous when I announced via radio one day at 1:30 p.m. that "Cottonwood Campground is FULL"! So much fun to do that - we are always the last place to fill up! The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was at a party for Jane Brown's 65 birthday and ran into the Chisos Basin hosts. We shared some good laughs about how most of those women drove Casitas and could not back them up without running over all kinds of things and making ruts where no ruts had ever been before, were mad at us because they could not run their vehicles to charge the house batteries, etc.

It was fun to be so full and busy over the holiday week. I was truly thankful that none of the campers tried to deep-fry a turkey and burn down the campground! Saturday morning, when all but 2 campers pulled out to return to civilization, jobs, etc. I came back to the campground and we had a herd of 19 javelina grazing!!!

19 Javelina!!

Hey, stop with that milk please!

Thank you, Mom.

An adult that appears to be saying, "Yuk, what did I just eat?"

In addition, I went on patrol of  Old Maverick Road with Steve & Tina:

Tina & Steve Ehrman

Historic trinkets aka "museum rock" made by visitors

Hiked the historic Dorgan Sublett area where families whose surnames were Dorgan and Sublett ran a farming operation here in the early 1900's:

On a day with good lighting I will go back and take photos of the beautiful fireplace hiding behind this wall. It is made with petrified wood from this area.

A view of the Santa Elena Canyon notch through the front window.

Burro Spring Exploration - Previously I had hiked the Burro Spring Overlook, but one day I went back to hike up to the spring. It is one of the places people in-the-know report seeing many signs of mountain lion. Unfortunately no sign of mountain lions for me that day! But it was still a fun hike:

I could only hear the plopping of leopard frogs which inhabit Big Bend's springs.

The large cottonwood trees which are the hallmark of desert springs.

Wasps congregating at the base of a willow tree at the spring.

One of at least 3 dozen scaled quail who kept fleeing as I hiked round the spring. On the hike out I noticed my footprints were almost obliterated by quail prints. They had circled back to peck at the sand where I had interrupted them earlier.

Creosote mistletoe.

Cane cholla

One of a jillion different prickly pear varieties here. (Of course, I exaggerate!)

Yesterday rain altered plans for a morning hike to the airplane crash site. Instead Raymond and I ventured into Terlingua for errands at the adventure shop, Desert Sports, a nice chat with owner, Mike, and a delicious brunch at the Starlight. A trip to Terlingua is always an adventure, but was so much more fun with Raymond who seems to know just about everyone in town. Terlingua is a little town of free-thinkers, artists, musicians, off-the-grid environmentalists, mountain bikers, river adventurers, & hikers with a few real characters, certified crazies and drinkers thrown in as "added spice". Kind of like many towns, but in a hard scrabble desert environment. :-) Raymond is interested in the history of this area and was worried that the former "Terlingua Mall" across from the Cottonwood store would be torn down one day without anyone having documented their wall of advertisements. So we took a bunch of photos of the wall and here are some of the notable ads. After several relaxing hours in Terlingua there was just enough daylight to hike out to the airplane crash site and back, so off we went.

Today Bob Douat and I hiked Horseshoe Canyon. It was so much fun to do a little 1-2 mile jaunt in another canyon known for retaining a lot of water and the associated creatures like mountain lion! Bob said the canyon did not have as much water as it had in all the past 10 years that he has hiked it, but still nice. Yes, we spent a lot of time watching up high on the canyon walls and behind us for any mountain lions sneaking up on us!

In the days to come are the park employees' Casa Grande Association's Christmas Auction (with all things made by and/or donated by park employees and volunteers) to benefit the association, the Dodson key exchange hike (a big hike not for the weak!), and various Christmas celebrations. Stay tuned!