A Year About

We’ve been here two full days and it feels like much longer. We rumbled up one of the backcountry roads nearby called Old Ore Road. It was once used to haul silver and zinc ore mined near Boquillas Canyon up to the railroad in Marathon, roughly 80+ miles away. I can’t imagine. We drove five miles to a really cool canyon and it took us 40 minutes! I was feeling proud of driving this rugged road in our four-wheel-drive pick-up until I saw a 70s vintage Volkswagen Bus towing a mini trailer come lumbering by.


The tinaja is the pool in the foreground.

Our destination was the Ernst Tinaja, which is a deep bowl carved by water in the limestone floor of Ernst Canyon. It’s a fascinating formation and the walls surrounding it are layered and contorted in mesmerizing patterns. The tinaja is about twelve feet deep and apparently animals (mountain lion, javelina, mule deer) occasionally drown in it when the water level is lower, unable to scramble up the polished limestone sides.



Elise relished the opportunity to climb along the shelves of rock. She is sporting a new messenger bag she purchased with her own money that is part of an archeologist’s kit (including a shovel/sifter, magnifying glass, brush, tweezers, and notepad). The bag is a nice size for her and, as she says, makes her feel like a hiker instead of just a walker.


Sitting on the rock formation known as Elise’s Couch with new archeology bag

Afterwards, we drove over to Boquillas Canyon, which is on the Rio Grande and has been a popular crossing into Mexico. It’s officially closed now, but Mexicans regularly come across and leave little displays of the handmade goods we had seen before. The canyon and the views nearby are so massive that the photos just don’t quite cut it. Sorry about that.


An impromptu store


Lil’ tiny Danine

We regrouped at the trailer, got in our swimsuits and went to Hot Springs. There was a resort here once and the ruins of several buildings still remain: the motel, post office, and store. The springs themselves are right on the Rio Grande with only a little wall separating them. We enjoyed the toasty 105 degree water in the cool of the afternoon. Elise and I dipped our feet in the river and then back in the springs to get that warm, tingly sensation. The road to the springs is a little rugged, but that doesn’t stop folks from going to it — it’s a popular spot.



Our day ended with a ranger talk at the campground ampitheater on mountain lions. We learned tons. The mountain lion has many names, but they all represent the same species of cat: puma, panther, catamount, painter, shadowalker. There are approximately two dozen in Big Bend. They don’t tend to bother people, though we’d be easy to catch. They are, for the most part, solitary and each controls a territory of 20 to 100+ square miles. Of the over 300,000 visitors to Big Bend last year, only about 100 saw even a glimpse of a mountain lion.

This view is called The Window.

The distribution of beauty in the world does not seem to have been accomplished very fairly. Take Big Bend for example. It is pleasing to the eye in every direction and in almost every corner of the park. This is very unlike, say, Newark. I wouldn’t want to change things and give a little of Big Bend to Newark. I’m just noting the disparity.



We did another lovely hike yesterday afternoon called the Chisos Basin Loop. It’s about 1.8 miles and many of the longer hikes into the high Chisos branch off of it. To see a stunning view, you need only not look at your shoes (unless you have some really amazing shoes). When I was appraising houses, “stunning” was a word used by real estate agents to describe every single house, no matter how awful. Realtors have a gift for hyperbole — actually, it’s more of a compulsion. I have never seen a stunning house: “Sir! Are you okay? You collapsed on the floor here in our stunning two-story foyer!”


This buck was ten yards off the trail.


Elise investigates the grasses.

Well, I didn’t collapse in the Chisos, but I couldn’t take my eyes of off the mountains (which led to a lot of stumbling). I kept taking pictures of Casa Grande and The Window. They were all the same picture, but I couldn’t help it! It was a great warm-up hike (at 5,000+ feet) for the three of us.


At this point, Elise is like that Travelocity gnome.

It was cold last night. The furnace ran regularly even at 58 degrees. I tried to turn on the water this morning, but the outside hose had frozen. Luckily, there’s water in our tank (which is warmed by the ductwork). I’ll try to remember to drain the hose before bedtime tonight.

Today we are going to drive one of the backcountry roads and do a couple hikes, and, if we’re in the mood this afternoon, we’ll go to Hot Springs (105 degrees) for a dip.


Elise works on her junior ranger booklet wearing my stylish hat.

The Chicos Mountains are in the distance. That is the Rio Grande in the picture.

If there was ever a question that God existed, that would be answered if you were here in Big Bend with us. This place is unbelievable. Really, it is.

This morning we took part in a ranger walk that left from our campground, Rio Grande Village. In an hour and a half, we walked over a desert wetland, through the desert to the Rio Grande and up a hill to an amazing view of the park and Mexico.


A wetland in the desert? Who woulda thunk?

The desert wetland is formed from 18 different springs and some industrious bank beavers (because they make their homes in the banks of the river instead of lodges) who have contained the water. We saw a great blue heron looking for breakfast. This is supposed to be one of the great birding areas in the park although it was rather quiet this morning.

As we walked through the desert we came upon a small pile of homemade crafts for sale. Apparently, Mexicans cross the Rio Grande and leave these “stores” hoping that people in the park will buy them. We saw walking sticks, bracelets, insects made from wire and beads, crystals and some cave formations that had been taken from some caves in Mexico. I wish we’d thought to take a picture. The ranger we were with collected some of these and will take them back to park headquarters.


Looking into Mexico.

The talk the ranger gave was called “Tattered Tapestry” and she did a great job talking about the challenges facing the park as it tries to manage its natural resources, the impact of tourists, and working as a park on an international boundary.

After the talk, Bobby went to the campground store to see if there was room for us in the full hook-up campground. Yesterday when we got here, there was no room at the inn, so to speak, so we stayed last night at the campground with no hook-ups. We knew that we could manage this for about two days, but probably not more. The temperature at night is close to freezing and even with the thermostat set at 55 degrees, the furnace was running a lot last night. Propane isn’t an issue, it’s the batteries. Luckily we got a spot today so we quickly hitched up again and drove about 4 minutes to our new site. It’s another parking lot, like Mustang Island, but much narrower. It took us more than a few tries to get into our spot, but here we are. We’re hoping to hook back up with our friends from Mustang Island, Molly and Harry while we are here. They said they’d be heading this way this week and we’re looking forward to seeing them again.

Now that we have had lunch, we are off to Chisos Mountain Lodge to post this (the only place in the park with wi-fi) and then we’ll do a few more hikes before heading back here.

As we headed out to Big Bend, we stopped at a couple overlooks. The first was where the road crosses the Pecos River with its sheer cliffs instead of banks.


This is the tallest over-the-water bridge in Texas. The one that was here before didn’t look this good!

The second was a canyon similar to Seminole and the site of the ancient bison jump that Elise wrote about.


It was a long way down for those bison.

As we continued, Danine and I could not take our eyes off of the incredible landscape: the lack of trees makes it easy to see every curve and outcrop of the land. The shapes of the hills and mountains are so different from anything we’re used to. So we are easy to please.


The scenery was even spectacular in the side-view mirrors!


Not a lot out here, but it sure is pretty!

Entering Big Bend itself, the views only got better. The vast steep wall (literally) of the Sierra del Carmen in Mexico was to our left and in front were the Chisos Mountains with their improbable points and jagged ridges.


The Sierra del Carmen Mountains of Mexico.

More later . . .

This is Seminole Canyon. All the pictures from this post are from my camera that my cousins, Conor and Taylor, gave me!

We woke up this morning and I was not feeling well. It was freezing outside, too. It was 30 degrees outside and when we got back from the canyon it was 33 degrees. Can you believe that?! It’s never been this cold on this trip except for the time we got up for the sunrise at Cadillac Mountain.

We walked down to the canyon with a guide because they won’t let you go down alone because there are ancient paintings on the walls. A lot of the paintings were shaman – the people who talked to the gods. They were kind of like priests that we have now. It was pretty interesting. Not as interesting as you would probably imagine. Or maybe it is, to you.

I was surprised because it was a pretty small canyon, not very, very gi-normous like the Grand Canyon. There was an exhibit in the park headquarters that had paintings of Indians participating in a bison “jump”. In a bison jump, they surround the bison and make them stampede to the edge of the canyon. The bison are so scared that they jump off into the canyon. There are hunters waiting at the bottom waiting to kill the bison that jumped. Sometimes the bison are dead when they get to the bottom of the canyon and sometimes the hunters kill them if they are not dead already.


She is grinding grain into flour on the mortar stone.

There were Indian spear tips in another part of the exhibit that were real but they looked fake because they were so smooth and had been touched.

I made a video of this little exhibit of an Indian group, which is a family making spear tips and living in the rock shelter.


He is making a spear and I think she is weaving a mat.

The Fate Bell Shelter. The pictographs are on the walls to the left.

We woke up to overcast skies, which stayed with us all day. Despite this, we met at the visitor center at 10:00 a.m. for a guided tour down into Seminole Canyon and a look at the shelters and pictographs that can be found there. We’ve been getting used to rather cold nights and days ranging into the sixties, so we weren’t phased when we saw it was thirty degrees outside.


Mortar holes from the Indians who lived here. This is where they would grind seeds and grain into flour.

It was a cold yet rewarding scramble down into the canyon. Our guide was genial and knowledgable about the pictographs, the history of the region and its peoples, as well as the plants and animals found around here. The bottom of the canyon is almost entirely smooth rock. Eroded into the steep sides at various bends are deep overhangs that were once used as shelters for the nomadic groups the lived in the area. They painted most of the symbols and drawings some 3,000-4,000 years ago. Their artwork is fading now, but the vibrancy of painting still evident. Lots of stuff about shamans and deer and spears and a panther. What they mean and why they are here are matters of conjecture and little consensus. Suffice it to say that it looks like really cryptic graffiti.


What’s your guess as to what this picture is about?!

We returned enlightened and still cold! The temperature rose only to thirty-three. So we spent the afternoon cozy in the trailer until we couldn’t bear it anymore. We set off, still in the cold and still under overcast skies (but more warmly dressed), on a 6-mile walk to an overlook. We timed it well. As we approached the overlook the sun dipped low enough below the clouds to shine a deep orange light on the far walls of the canyon. I took some pictures, but honestly, they don’t convey the vastness of the landscape or the depth of the crags and undulating ridges. You’ll have to wait for the IMAX movie.


Nothin’ like standing on the edge of a canyon at sunset!

Our site at Seminole Canyon. Not many people around.

We left San Antonio and the better part of civilization behind us this morning and are now happily ensconced at Seminole Canyon on the border of Mexico. The Rio Grande is just a few miles away and we can see the mountains of Mexico from our campsite.

The beauty of the desert is hard for me to describe. It’s brown this time of year, after all. Maybe it’s the starkness of it that I like so much. The bushes are all scraggly and the hills sort of blend into each other which makes their heights deceiving. The sky is a brilliant blue today with no clouds. The sunset should be spectacular and we will have an unimpeded view as it sets over the mountains.


A little bit of color out here.

Remember the ladybugs that swarmed our trailer at Brazos Bend in Houston? It turns out that we have brought them with us. When we were in Choke Canyon a week ago, Bobby opened the awning and hundreds of ladybugs flew out and even more stayed on the awning. Since then, anytime the trailer has been in the sunlight, we have had many in the windows. They crawl into the weep holes and crawl around looking for the way out. Today, Bobby opened the awning again and sure enough, there are still a good hundred of them! We’ll get rid of them all sooner or later.


Enough with the ladybugs already!!

Elise is feeling a little peckish this afternoon, so we are hanging out in the trailer listening to a dramatization of “Lord of the Rings”. She is reading her Highlights magazine, I’m here writing to you and Bobby is talking to his parents on the phone. Tomorrow we will go on a tour of the canyon here. You can’t go down to the canyon floor on your own. There are some Indian pictographs down there the state wants to make sure don’t get defaced. Hopefully, Elise will be feeling well enough for it. She was grumpy with me last week because Choke Canyon wasn’t a canyon at all. It would be a shame for her to miss our first actual canyon because she isn’t feeling well!

We just got a new shipment of books, courtesy of my mom, so we spent part of today reading books from home.

I convinced Bobby to stay an extra day here in San Antonio so that we could go to the zoo and Brackenridge Park. Today was the day. And today it rained. So instead of watching animals and walking through Japanese gardens, we spent the day in the trailer, doing a few last loads of laundry at the campground, schooling the child and planning our next few weeks. Elise never left the trailer today and spent the entire day in her pajamas. Bobby made a delicious crock pot meal involving chicken thighs, oranges, butternut squash, garlic and other yummy ingredients. It was a cozy day.


Bobby said he was doing budget stuff, but really I think he was playing Scrabble!

Since we will be in Big Bend by the end of the week, I made another trip to the grocery store to stock up. The first campground we will stay at there has full hook-ups. Wherever we stay after that in Big Bend will not, so we’ll be boondocking. While we have hook-ups I have planned a unbelievably delicious corn soup and a few crock pot recipes. Once we are without electricity, we will be grilling a lot. So our freezer is full of meat and the refrigerator is full of fresh fruits and vegetables. We’ll be eating well this next week!

Quick aside and small rant: I CANNOT find Low-Sodium Wheat Thins anywhere in Texas! I can find Ranch Wheat Thins and Reduced Fat Wheat Thins and Sun-Dried Tomato Wheat Thins, but I cannot find the low-sodium ones and it is driving me crazy! Don’t grocers in Texas want their customers to be able to buy low sodium products?! Are they in cahoots with the National Salt Association (is there such a thing?) or something? I tell you what: I’m looking forward to New Mexico and can only HOPE that they have the sense to provide their citizens with Low-Sodium Wheat Thins!

We leave tomorrow for Seminole Canyon in Comstock, Texas. This will be our first real desert experience. Some of the oldest Indian pictographs in North America are here. Should be fun to see!

We’re not sure what our wi-fi situation will be once we get to Big Bend. We will try and post, but if we can’t (which I suspect will be the case), we will write our blogs daily and then post them all at once once we find a connection.

A side view of the San Jose mission church

There is nothing like a couple of mission churches that are over 275 years old and built when there were no roads, no cranes, no complex machines, and no architectural design software to remind you that most of the churches built in the last 50 years, say, aren’t much better than bowling alleys. I am speaking of Catholic churches here since I am most familiar with them and, frankly, since they tend to be some of the most egregious violators of aesthetic design principles. What happened? Modernism happened, I guess, and a desire to ignore or toss out many centuries of tradition (and proven designs).

After a morning of schoolin’ Elise, we went to two of the five missions around San Antonio. We’d already seen the Alamo which was the oldest and is really called Mission San Antonio de Valero. Today we saw San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo and Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion. Gotta love the Spanish flare for names. All of these missions were established in the early to mid-1700s by the Franciscans. They were all really meant to create Spanish citizens out of the nomadic native communities. The Gospel message was practiced on a local level in many ways, but the big picture had little to do with Christ’s teachings. Still, the missions did become refuges for the native groups (collectively referred to as the Coahuiltecans) from hardships of drought and more warlike tribes like the Apaches.


The altar and sanctuary at San Jose

San Jose was the largest of the local missions and we headed there first. Most of the church remains intact, but the dome was reconstructed after a collapse, as was the bell tower. These places are so pleasing to me. I like the simplicity of the architecture and the self-sufficiency required to make the mission work and thrive. The interiors are a far cry from the churches we saw yesterday, and I prefer their austerity.


The exterior of Mission Concepcion


And interior

One of the neatest things about all of the missions (except the Alamo) is that they are all still used today. Each is an active parish within the local diocese, and a couple are still run by the Franciscans — not a bad place to go every Sunday. The Church is in charge of restoration, while the National Park Service administers the visitor centers and the surroundings. I asked the ranger who guided us around San Jose how well that worked and she said it worked well. The Church and the State working together in harmony! Who’da thunk.


Working on that Ranger badge!

Elise completed another Junior Ranger badge for the missions, scrambling around and identifying the various buildings and such. She says she likes the history programs more than the nature programs. She says she doesn’t like nature walks and hikes, but once on them she never complains. I think she doesn’t like the idea of walking around.


The side door into Mission San Jose

We rounded out our day with tuna casserole, an old standby and a comfort food to all three of us. Tomorrow is our last day in San Antonio. We’ll spend it at the zoo.

It finally happened. For the first time on this trip, I found another town besides Falls Church/Annandale I could call home. And here’s our new house – what do you think?!


In the King William Historic District.

No, we aren’t serious, but we do really like San Antonio. The people are very friendly here and you can’t beat short-sleeves in January!

Day 2 in San Antonio started with Mass at St. Joseph’s downtown. St. Joseph’s was built in 1868-1871 for the German Catholic congregation living in the immediate vicinity. A locally owned department store, Joske’s, was located next to St. Joseph’s and attempted to buy the land the church was on when the store expanded. The diocese refused and so the store built around the structure. So after Mass, you can head right over to Dillard’s for their twice yearly sale!



We have been using the public bus system to get downtown from the kampground and we’ve been impressed. The drivers have been very friendly and helpful and the riders, for the most part, are too. When we ask what the stop is for the Alamo, for example, the drivers will say, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll tell you when it comes.” And they do! Today we took the streetcar (a trolley on wheels) down to the King William Historic District to take a look at the homes. Many of these houses date to the mid-1800s and were built by German families. The main street through the neighborhood, now named King William, was once called Sauerkraut Bend.


Check out the back porch on the second floor!



After “oohing” and “aahing” at the all the homes we’ll never own, we made our way to Market Square, a very large open air market. Bobby and I ate some delicious cheese and bean gorditas and I found a new skirt and purse I have been looking for. Elise got a new doll and introduced her to all her other animals and friends when we got home tonight.


They’ve got everything here and it all costs $3.95!

On our way to Market Square we made a quick detour to check out San Fernando Cathedral. It is the oldest cathedral sanctuary in the United States and was founded in 1731. It just underwent a $5.5 million renovation and serves over 4,000 people at the weekend Masses.



We’ll probably stay one day longer than we were planning to fit in our last two items on the agenda – visiting the Mission churches and going to the zoo and Brackenridge Park. From here we are off to Seminole Canyon and then Big Bend. We’re really looking forward to getting out toward the desert!


This is on the Riverwalk. The top tree started growing when a seed was deposited after the river flooded, date unknown. The second tree was planted to help support the first tree so that it wouldn’t lean out too far, rip out the foundation and destroy the building!