My dear family had their turkey and stuffing on Saturday before I left to visit my sister in Southwestern Texas for the week. She lives in the Chihuahuan Desert and this is my first time out here. Paige and I have been having a such a nice time relaxing, sight-seeing, and checking out a couple trails here and there. We visited the Chihuanhuan Desert Research Institute on Monday and hiked one of the trails there, then walked through the botanical gardens and the cactus greenhouse. I have other photos on another camera, which I'll share once I get back home, but these are some I'm able to upload right now.
The first night I was here, I had the pleasure of seeing the full moon rise over the desert. Wow, it is big country!
Yesterday we took a road trip down to Big Bend National Park and drove around a bit to see inside the basin.
Then we headed back out to the Grapevine Hills trail. Our hike led us through some pretty flat, easy terrain, then up the "hill" to Balanced Rock. It wasn't so much hill as it was the side of a rocky mountain. Paige has a lot more experience hiking this stuff (something about spending the majority of my hours at home teaching school to my children that limits my desert trail hiking opportunities...), so she found it to be a very easy hike. I had a few thrills here and there with being up so high, but as long as I stayed behind her, I was okay. It was a great trail, because it wasn't so long that we couldn't do anything else the same day, and it had plenty of variation in the views and difficulty so that it was interesting and very photographic. I had a great time!
Standing by a tall ocatillo cactus on the side of the 6.5 mile gravel road leading to the trail head.
At the top, in front of Balanced Rock. I don't look too much worse for the wear!
Looking back down toward the trail, from about 1/4 of the way down the "hill".
The view through the Balanced Rock, looking southward toward Mexico.
After our hike, we drove around the west side of the park to look at the view near another trail, but decided it was too long to give us time for dinner. I did get to see two very fast road runners crossing the road, of course. They were too fast, and I was too slow, to get their photos. Then the "check engine" light came on in her car which was good for a thrill. However, there was no problem with the engine temperature or anything else we could find, so she topped off the oil and we went to dinner. The Starlight Theater restaurant served a delightful meal--superb chips and guacamole--and the country-fried antelope with Shiner Bock beer gravy was excellent! Next time I'm going for the pork medallions in chipotle reduction. Mmmmm.
We got home at a reasonable hour, and only had to drive over one dead javalina on the highway. Those are nasty animals when they're alive, and they're a couple degrees nastier when they're dead. Ick.
Now we're hanging out after a breakfast of home-grown chicken eggs, country ham, toast, and figs. I could get used to this....
And a big thank you to Ringo, for letting me use his laptop.
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