Big Cold Bend

I got into Big Bend National Park late Tuesday afternoon and made my way to to the center of the park where I thought I would be camping... unfortunately, that turned out to be in the frozen mountains. So I took a few photos and made my way to a lower elevation at the far eastern side of the park. I figured I could camp here my fist night do some hiking and then set up camp on the western side (the direction I am heading) the next night. I set up camp and then cooked myself a bag of dehydrated dinner. It is amazing how being alone makes camping a lot less exciting, it got dark early and I eventually hit the hay around 9pm. It was a chilly night but I was able to sleep pretty well.

I woke up the next morning just after the sun and went for a hike near the campgrounds a trail called Rio Grande Village Nature Trail. It was a short .75 mile hike to get the blood flowing. I got back, packed up the car and made my way over to the Boquillas Canyon Trail a 1.4 mile hike to check out the Rio Grande. I then drove back into the frozen mountains for the hike of the day, a 4.8 mile roundtrip hike they call the The Lost Mine Trail. I have got to say that while the park is not empty it was rather quiet. The campgrounds that I stayed at were getting a bit of use, maybe 40% capacity. I got to The Lost Mine Trail around 11:30 and ran into a couple on their way out of the trail and then I only saw one other person on the entire trail also on his way down just after I started. The clouds were hanging heavily o the mountains only briefly at some point would I be able to see any views of the other nearby peaks. I climaxed at 12:30 and lit up my Jetboil to prepare my lunch and a cup of hot cocoa. As I made my descent, I was able to take a few more photos and I decided that instead of camping on the west end of the park I would just drive over there, check it out and make my way westward. It was probably a desire to sleep in a nice warm bed after spending the day freezing my tail off. I eventually got off the trail at 2pm.

I drove through the park along a lovely long and winding road and around 3:30 got to the end of the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. This was another location where I was able to check out the Rio Grand where it had carved a canyon in the cliffs along the US/Mexican border. I got out to check it out and noticed a trail that went across a stream and into the canyon. It was the 1.7 mile Santa Elena Canyon Trail. I decided to hop on it to get a few photos. Although I was not particularly interested in hiking much more I wound up doing around 75% of the trail. Walking along the Rio Grand was fairly intriguing to me because although I was in the US at the time I was just the rivers width away from a foreign country.

I eventually exited the park around 5pm and headed towards El Paso. It was quite a bit of driving after my already full day. Most of it was along straight two lane roads with a speed limit of 70mph. Except for the rare city the drive was rather dark, I was only able to see what my headlights were illuminating. There were a few altitude changes and a bit of snow on the fields lining the road. At one point I came upon a field on my left with an illuminated bright white aircraft of some sort. My imagination was racing and I started thinking that it could be an alien ship. It was in a fenced in military area and I was afraid for my life to stop and take a photo. I later found it on Google Earth, it appears to be a weather blimp, it's coordinates are:
30°26'4.15"N & 104°19'14.56"W
I got into El Paso around 10pm after crossing into the Mountain time zone. I had decided to pass up both Carlsbad Caverns & Guadalupe Mountains National Park due to the sever chill that was passing through that part of the country. I would instead be heading to Phoenix and get in a day earlier than I had planned. But that would have to wait until I got some sleep in El Paso.