Week 3 - Guadalupe and Big Bend, Texas

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Left for Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where we were thwarted for a campground our first night, but found one the next morning, set up camp, and went for a nice hike up the mountains. Great views of canyons, rock outcroppings, desert, and forests. At night the stars were unbelievable - best view of them we’ve seen in a while! From there headed to Big Bend National Park along the Texas/Mexico border. We set up camp and had a nice evening at Chisos Basin campground surrounded by mountains and mesas. Spent a couple days exploring some of the trails in the area, and treated ourselves to some long-overdue showers and ice cream. Shane decided to split open his toe by smashing it into some concrete and then re-smashing it open the next day. Walking was never his best skill. We debated a trip down the Rio Grande in our inflatable kayaks but L wasn’t so excited by the idea because of the talk of Class IV rapids in some of the reading material we had. We opted for a rafting trip instead. (Turns out the rapids weren’t so rapid this time of year, oh well.) Rafting trip was great. We joined about 20 other people (again, we were the token people under 50) and set off down the river. Came shortly upon a truck submerged up to its hood in the river. It was of much interest to the hordes of heavily armed border patrolmen (Mex and American) looking on from the shore. After about ten miles of slow water floating along, we reached Santa Elena Canyon. Colorful canyon walls surround you on the water for 10 miles.

Headed out into the backcountry in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend, where we were treated to some great views of more canyons, mountains, and desert. We were joined by a large group of deer for most of the evening by our campsite. We thought the grass must be particularly delicious in that area, but then we noticed they were really concentrating on one particular spot - looked closer and saw someone had dumped out a big pile of M&Ms and that was the big attraction. Our second night we were treated to a spectacular sunset, but otherwise just read, relaxed, and played some cutthroat UNO...

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