JAN 15 2016 HOUSTON TO BIG BEND AND WEST TO CA

January 15, Friday

We left home about 8:30AM, driving south through Houston.  We won’t miss this!

 We are heading to Junction, which is about 2 hours west of San Antonio – 5-6 hours.  A fair amount of traffic on I-10, which is the major east-west highway.  Busy San Antonio which is a sprawling city, and then things begin to thin out.

We wind through hill country, and then into dry, rocky land with mesquite and other scrubby trees.  Lots of cattle and goats.   We arrive at Junction, get gas and then find the city park.  It is along the Llano River and offers free campsites to travelers.   Quite nice, with clean flush toilets, playground, benches, etc.   We pull in about 2:00 on what has become a gorgeous day – sunny, high 60’s, blue sky!

 Spend the afternoon walking and relaxing in the sun, reading.  I am finishing The Orphan Master’s Son, next month’s bookclub book, and Greg is reading a biography of Dwight D Eisenhower.  Several vehicles arrive, two other campers and several locals who are walking dogs or playing with their kids on the playground. Someone has made  an interesting eagle carving near the playground.

The mountain across the river picks up the golden glow  of the setting sun, but temperatures tumble too.

We have some humus and pita, followed by chicken soup.  Highway 10 is probably less than ½ mile away and we can see some headlights, through the trees, but the sound of the water tumbling over the impoundment nicely drowns out any noise.

Saturday, January 16

We wake early while it is still dark and about 40 degrees, and decide to head out.  Pass several deer who are enjoying the park without people! Will have to check out the town of Junction another time.

Traffic isn’t too bad as the sun rises.  The speed limit is 80 here but we dawdle along at 62, which we’ve found is optimum for gas mileage.  We pass a State Trooper going even slower and assume he is doing border patrol work.  We have seen a few motorhomes/rv’s on the road but this one is unique.

We pass many ranches – this steer caught our eye with his rakish horn display. 

While I was taking his picture, a large herd of cattle across the road spotted us and, we assume, thought they were getting food.  They stampeded to the fenceline and put up quite a racket!

Outside of the little town of Iran (yes, Iran, TX) there are many wind farms with twirling turbines.  Texas leads the US in wind production and it is apparent why as Greg wrestles with keeping the Trek on an even keel in the strong winds.  Something about the combination of mesas and low lands funnel the winds.This is also an oil well area, as you see the jack pump in front of the turbines, below.

We have breakfast and turn south near Fort Stockton and travel through lots and lots of unpopulated land.  We stop for gas at the small town of Marathon, which will be the only town we go through en route to Big Bend National Park.  A herd of antelope and occasional hawk or other bird are the only life.  We stop at one of those roadside “Historical Marker” spots and learn about the military’s experimentation with camels in this area in the mid 1800’s.

Arrive at the entrance to the Park about 2:00 and decide to head first to the Panther Creek Visitor’s Center with some questions.  We forgot that this is a holiday weekend, and learn that one of the three campgrounds in the park is already filled! They have many backcountry campgrounds, but we find that the only ones accessible with the Trek are already booked.   So we head to Rio Grande Campground where we snag one of the last available sites!

We revisited a trail that begins at the campground.  Things are not nearly so green as in Spring-Fall, but still pretty.  We take a new path that winds alongside the RioGrande for a while and see a band of javelina which quickly melt into the brush.

We’ve seen a few interesting birds, including this roadrunner.  

We ride bikes to a nearby camp store but Beth is having problems with the gears not shifting.   We walk a trail hoping for a nice sunset but the sky was too clear today and there was little color.  Spotted this screech owl along the trail on the way back to camp.  

Sausage with red beans and rice for dinner.  Nice, quiet night but temperatures dropped to near 30!

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Rose early and drove over to Boquillas Canyon, where we had breakfast and then hit the trail.  It is cold until the sun finally reaches over the mountains.  We notice these horses on the Mexican side of the river, and at one point we hear someone singing and saying hello.  Mystery solved as we come across a donation box for the “Mexican Singing Jesus”.  

We have decided to go across the river to the town of Boquillas this trip.  There is a crossing area and we have to show our passports.  A ranger named Ryan is very friendly and informative and tells us to just follow the path down to the river, where the “International Ferry” (aka row boat) will take us across. 

A nice young man takes us across for $5, and we are met by another singing Mexican who heartily welcomes us to Mexico and points us towards the transportation to town.  We have a choice of burro, horse or pick-up truck and decide to go with the burros.  We are also greeted by Estaban, a man of indeterminate years, who will be our guide.  He helps us onto the burros and he walks while we ride about a mile over a rough dirt road to the town.

Here we go to the Federales to get a free one-day visa, and then walk around the town.  Many of the homes have tables out front from which they are selling crafts – wire sculptures, hand stitched cloths, braided bracelets, etc.  Young children also are hawking these items.  

We walk through town, see their church, a small school where Estaban says they have kindergarten (I think he means small children) in the morning and highschool in the afternoon.   There are only about 200 residents.

We walk out the other side of town, up hill past a solar panel field – this is the only source of electricity in the town . 

There is also a large water tank.  Water is pumped to this tank from wells and then is gravity fed down into the town.  Estaban seems proud of these accomplishments, which he says his government provided.

We stop for lunch at the Boquillas restaurant where we share tomales (good) and enchiladas (ok) and rice. 

There are many dogs in the town.  There is another section of town which does not have electricity and which, according to Estaban, can flood.  The government paid people who lived there to build a house on higher ground, but many of them prefer to stay there.  Estaban bought  one of government provided houses from someone  who didn’t want to move.  The houses are very small squares with several windows.

Estaban also does guiding into the mountains and showed us some pictures of groups he has taken to high peaks, old mines, etc.    We look in a small shop and buy some Vanilla for our neighbor – they have excellent vanilla.  Then it is back to Federales, back on the burros and back to the International Ferry.  We speak with a couple from Washington state and note that many of the license plates are from “snow birds”. There was only one other car when we arrived at the crossing and now the parking lot is full.  We passed many gringos as we were eating and leaving town.  The whole town of Boquillas lives pretty much on tourism.

It is still early afternoon, so we head over to another trail we have heard about.  It is all uphill through rough, rocky terrain, but there is a beautiful view from atop the cliffs.    And the walk back was all downhill :).  Temp around 70 now!

A quick visit to the camp store for ice cream and beer (you can guess who got what ), then back to the campsite to relax a bit.  Around 6:00,  we decide to drive to an overlook to check out the sunset.  Talk with a few folks there, including two girls from TCU that we take photos for on their camera and phone.  Nice sunset.

Dinner is a sandwich.  Temperatures falling again.  We read/look at photos/start blog.  No service here for cell phone or internet, but tomorrow we will stop at the store (which also has the only showers around) and use their internet – we hope.