In Big Bend National Park, Texas, we did three hikes. The first hike was in the mountains, called the Lost Mine Trail. It was named that for a legend that there is an old silver mine around there. Even though we didn’t find the mine, we still had a lot of fun. The ridge at the top had panoramic views of the Chisos mountains. It was very strange to see pine trees after being in the desert below.

The second hike was a trail to some hot springs next to the Rio Grande river.  We all sat in the hot springs.The water wasn’t quite hot enough for Ma, too hot for Little Kid, and it was perfect for me . I put both feet in the freezing, freezing, freezing Rio Grande, then suddenly put them back in the hot spring. My feet were on fire!!!!!!!

The last hike we did in Big Bend was through Santa Elena canyon. After hiking through the canyon, we played on a beach near the beginning of the hike. Afterwards we went to a ghost town and had dinner at a place called Starlight Theater. It was named that after it been abandoned and the roofing was sold for scrap.  It was opened as a community center with the roof off, then re – opened as a restaurant after the owners rebuilt the roof. Ma and Pa loved the seitan.

One of the funny things about Big Bend was that along lots of trails there were Mexican crafts for sale. The people weren’t there, but there was a jar for money. On our way back on the nature trail, we found some crafts that weren’t there on our way in!

Another day, we decided to spend a day in Boquillas Del Carmen, Mexico. After going through a US port of entry, we walked to the river, where we were paddled across the river in a rowboat. On the other side, we were assigned a mandatory guide. They started requiring guides  when tourists were going in people’s homes. I decided to pay for a donkey ride to town. Ma and Pa walked, and Little Kid was allowed to sit in front of me on the donkey. He loved it. We spent the morning walking around town. Even though many kids came to us with bead crafts and bracelets, we just bought one beaded flower. After having lunch in a restaurant, we headed back home.

We had been planning to spend a week or two more in New Mexico, visiting White Sands, Roswell, and Carlsbad, but when we inventoried all the places we wanted to visit in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida we realized that we didn’t have enough time to visit everything.  So we decided to skip the rest of our New Mexico destinations and start driving towards Big Bend National Park (in Texas) today.  Right now we are spending the night at a Walmart outside El Paso, Texas, and tomorrow we are doing the long drive to Big Bend.

There is no cell phone service in Big Bend, so we will be out of pocket for a few days at least.  There is allegedly wifi at the store at the Big Bend campground, so we may have intermittent email contact.

Had a wonderful visit, with wonderful friends who drove from Tucson to meet us in Las Cruces.  Thanks, P & B … it was so, so great to see you both!!

 

A busy, fun – and cold – week:

Lots of parks and picnics;

A nice visit with Pa’s friends from college;

A fun visit to Petroglyphs NationalMonument, where both Big Kid and I became rangers and we did a family hike to see petroglyphs;

A great day at Explora – Albuquerque’s fantastic children’s museum;

And, a fantastic day at the zoo, where we saw elephants  playing with tires, a baby gibbon trying to stand up, and my favorite, a mama chimp with her two-week old twins!! Amazing!! We also saw another chimp (how to put this delicately …) recycling its waste.

On a day that we had planned to hike at Needles, Canyonlands we woke up to howling winds. Since we had no internet connection, we listened to NPR for the weather forecast. When we heard that a cold front was coming with “extreme arctic temps”, we decided to drive south as fast as we could. After many hours of driving, we stopped for lunch at Four Corners, the only place in the country where four states come together in one spot. In the monument, we had fun running around Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. I bought a slide whistle and before  we left, we bought a piece of delicious fry bread. Then, we continued our driving frenzy.