Bigbend and Aleins (i'm not talking about the southern border)

February 26, 2010 Road trip USA

           

 A late start to the day, road worn from the day before.  Breakfast at a fifties dinner, all chrome and glass, good joe and a bag lunch for $3.00 bucks.  The waitress a 4 foot something texas hurricane kind of gal who was lots of fun joking with the locals.  














We drove south on Texas 118.  It wasn’t long before we came upon a landscape that forced me to revise my previous held prejudice against Texas.  The sun was already high in the sky when Hen Egg Mountain revealed its splendor to us.  It appeared as a tumultuous golden sea of rock. Jagged hills heaved from the desert floor scattered with boulders all shades of yellow through to an earthy blood red. Dried river gulches snaked and disappeared into the stone.  Multi-colored orange and yellow grass lined the dead rivers and looked as though they where on fire.

 

Cactus and dwarf palms broke out with contractions of green. And then we reach the Big Bend Park entrance.  The vistas within the park are hard to describe.  Prehistoric cathedrals of stone push into a blue sky that envelopes you.  Ancient mountains, stone shedding soil, leaving only the hardest of minerals to defy the periodic raids from marauding gypsy rivers and the relentless attack from the sun. 






Sixteen miles further south and you reach the Rio Grande Basin.
















The transformation in the vegetation is staggering.  10’ tall grasses 30’ Cotton wood trees line the shores, remnants of old adobes.  A small oasis, then desert and another oasis.  We tented the night on the shore of the Rio Grande.  Cold, let me tell you, the condensation from our breath formed an ice sheet on the tent over night, -2 at night +22 in the day.  


We tried to find the natural hot springs for a nighttime warm-up, but the river was to high flooding them.  As we were walking something in the dark growled, sounding large. Time to go.  There is so much to see here but among my farvorite would have to be Boquillas Canyon.  So named for the little caves in the canyon walls.  Boquillas is little mouth in Spanish.  Aside from the natural splendor of the site what made it my favorite were the Mexicans on the other side of the river.  They sneak across the river and leave piles of handcrafts with price list on the ground (donations for the children of course).  You are meant to leave the cash and take what you like.  All illegal but seemingly not enforced.  

Perched on a large boulder on the other side of the river a man named Victor belted out Mexican folk songs.  We found his collection jar a left him a tip.  He had a good voice until he saw us put in the cash and then immediately took a break until the next people came by.  

The most beautiful place in the park is Chisos Basin.  High mountains surround you as you creep your way through a skinny, winding, mountain road.  More lush, with spectacular vistas in every direction, it gives one the sense that you are on top off the world. 

Begrudgingly we left the park, two days was not enough a week would be better.  We travel west along Texas 170.  First stop was Terlingaua ghost town.  An old mining and trading village; it bragged of having the biggest store east of El Paso in its day.  The ruins of adobe and dry stacked stone dwellings remain.  Some are intergraded into the existing, homes and businesses. 

Texas highway 170 roller coaster along the Rio Grande and is super fun to drive.  It also passes through a lesser known but know less beautiful Big Bend Ranch State Park.  The Sun was low in the sky and in our eyes, the tank was getting low and we were far from any town.  It’s the only way to drive a border hwy in the middle of a desert. 




We made Marfa in time for last call at a tex-mex restaurant.  Tummies hurting, we set out to find the “Mysterious Marfa Lights”.   About 8 miles east of town on hwy 90 you pull off the road and look to the south.  Wouldn’t you know it out in the desert lights appear and disappear, dance around seemingly interacting with one another and disappearing again.  Some big growing in brightness others look like faint stars.  Mostly white but some pale greens, blue, pinks.  Some people have seen reds and other colors.  They were first reported in the 1800’s by a cowpuncher that thought they might be Apache signal fires.  The Apache believed them to be stars falling from the sky.  I ask a local who was pumping the septic tank at the view center, he said “They tie lights to dogs and have em run around chasing one another, “We’re off to go feed them now” Some many different explanations, scientific or otherwise (Spanish conquistadors searching for gold) No one yet has proven a theory. Can’t explain them but having seen them we can’t discount them either.