Return to the Bend – Day 4

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We kicked off the morning by making the short hike into Boquillas Canyon fully expecting to see Victor The Singing Mexican standing on the far bank crooning something in Spanish. Instead we found Jesus The Singing Mexican on the American side setting out his trinkets for sale to the tourists.

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Just across the river is the tiny village of Boquillas del Carmen, which was once a must-visit destination for Big Benders. Tourists would board a flat-bottomed boat to be ferried over to a burro wrangler in Mexico. A short burro ride later, the tourists would drink and eat and shop in a pretty authentic desert village. Robert Earl Keen even wrote a great song about the whole thing.

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Here I am in full mullettude back in 1992 when I made the crossing with my dad, my uncle and cousin. My dad is the guy directly behind the pirate. See that colorful hat on the boat captain’s head? Dad would shortly trade his Nick Nolte Extreme Prejudice style cowboy hat for it. After the events of my 32nd birthday the government clamped the border shut and, since Boquillas is literally in the middle of nowhere, the little town just about died. A few hardy souls like Victor hung on and would daily sneak across the border and put out a few wares to get some much-needed cash flow into the village. I don’t think the authorities worried much about these people causing trouble.

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Last year the border crossing was finally reopened in an effort to restore a fun tourist experience and to help out the people of Boquillas. It doesn’t really have that scruffy feel anymore because you have to have a passport and go through customs. We didn’t plan far enough ahead to get passports so we didn’t make the river crossing. Despite the border crossing being open, many people still cross the river from Boquillas to sell their handicrafts. Life is hard down on the border so I won’t pile on about this merchant’s abuse of the apostrophe s.

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Jesus told us that Victor had taken his show back to Boquillas, leaving him with the gig.

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I had a thing for dogs there for a couple of days. This one had just swum the Rio Grande and he stopped to pose while his owner set up shop along the trail.

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We didn’t really go to Big Bend. I shot all the photos at home using a green screen.

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After leaving the Rio Grande Village area, we headed up into the Chisos Basin to grab some lunch and hike the Lost Mine Trail. Gina and I hiked this trail back in 1996 and I didn’t remember it being all that strenuous despite it’s being very uphill. I guess my memory is faulty, because it was pretty tough. Abby and Gina made it without a single complaint, though. (I need a sarcasm mark for the end of that sentence.) We hit right during the middle of the day and the sun was just too sunny for good photography.

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The trail tops out after 2.75 miles and 1,200 feet of elevation gain right on a narrow ridge separating two canyons that lead out of the mountains and into the desert. At roughly 7,000 feet elevation the views south toward Mexico are pretty spectacular. This photo is view of Casa Grande to the northwest. This was the beginning of a short love affair with that sunburst effect. Going back down was much easier, but still it was 5.5 miles. The longest hike Abby has ever made. And, despite her insistence to the contrary on the way up, it didn’t kill her.

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These last are both views of Pine Canyon and the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains. They look pretty terrible in color, but I think black and white captured the moment so nicely.

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When we got back to the car, I had a particular sunset photo in mind, but it was too late when I got the location. But I did find a fellow nearby shooting the sunset with a 4×5 large-format-film camera, Ansel Adams style. He graciously arranged his rig so that I could get a shot of what he was seeing on his ground glass.

Return to the Bend – Day 3

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We got word early in the morning that someone had held up the evening stage in Terlingua so we put together a posse to find the culprit and string him up. Unfortunately, our posse leader just took us through an area of old mine tailings, a historical dump and an abandoned golf course. The robber got away.

Awesome horse riding sound and you can hear how impressed I am with the posse leader’s tales of past exploits.

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Posse Assistant Joe gave us all some training on how to steer a horse. Yes, I know I pretty much look like Teddy Roosevelt in his Rough Rider days. Joe was on the front porch of the stables working on writing a new song when we pulled up.

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Abby had been beside herself for days in anticipation of going riding. The posse organizer made her wear a helmet, but by all indications, she had a great time.

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The posse leader (whose name I can’t remember) had a specific order in which we had to ride and the horses were not to pass each other. She didn’t tell us, but we were not to dismount the horses, either. Gramps found out about that secret rule the hard way. That put me behind Abby and I exclusively got shots of her back while she was riding.

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I did somehow manage to get a nice horseback portrait of Gramps.

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This dog greeted us every morning at the duplex. We took to calling him Morning Dog. Gina liked him so much that when she got home she invented an imaginary dog named scout based on Morning Dog. Except Scout wears a bandanna around his neck.

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That evening we went to the Starlight Theater, the hub of the local tourist industry, located at a historic abandoned mining village known as Terlingua Ghost Town. The restaurant/performance hall and associated souvenir store is just funky enough to not scare the tourists away while keeping the locals coming back.

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The place has a few works by local artists for sale.

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This is a confusing situation because a couple days later in the town of Lajitas we saw a live goat in a pen with a sign proclaiming it as “Clay Henry the mayor of Lajitas”. Some research reveals that this is the original Clay Henry and he’s had an interesting go of it in both life and death.

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I don’t know this duo’s name, but I saw the guitar player playing a coffee can on the front porch of the store on our first day in town. He must really love music.

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I had a filet with some sort of demi glace and mashed potatoes and a locally brewed beer. I gave the meal the extremely rare Golden FPW. It was that good.

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Terlingua seems to have a certain type of dog – very laid back, but looking like they are very experienced. I’m sure they all have tangled with a skunk or two and rolled around in the carcass of a road-killed deer and narrowly escaped a rattlesnake bite. See that our-of-focus guitar player in the background? That’s Joe from the posse mentioned earlier. He said he had played his new song and had gotten compliments on it. I’m sorry I missed it.

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Behind the store and restaurant in the ghost town proper, there’s an old Catholic church that is still in use. It’s got great details.

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A minute before I took this shot the entire sky was on fire. I was too busy jacking around and missed it.

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Return to the Bend – Day 2

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Our second day in the desert got off to an inauspicious start. We made the long drive over to Dagger Flat in hopes that a sea of yucca would be in full magnificent bloom. We’d seen many yuccas blooming in some areas of the park so I had high hopes. After a jouncey seven-mile drive on a dirt track we broke through into the flat and ….. nothing. The big bloom hadn’t started yet. So it was back to the drawing board. We headed over to the Grapevine Hills to hike the short trail through a geologic wonderland. Nana and Gramps had other plans so we didn’t catch up with them until later. It being midday, the light was harsh so the photography wasn’t that great.

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The little mountain range is the remains of an eroded igneous intrusion. It’s littered with all manner of red flaky boulders. The first mile was a nice stroll on a well-beaten, flat path, but the final quarter mile was a pretty decent climb. In the warmer parts of the year the little valley is probably a furnace, but we had a nice day with temps in the lower 80s. The area looks like a classic place for the hero in a cowboy picture to get trapped by wild Comanches. Abby was dying to see some javelinas and she finally got her chance. They were sneaking around in the brush around a spring so I couldn’t get a picture.

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Abby used her binoculars to watch for Indians. Note how she leaned up against a rock to keep from sky-lining herself and becoming an easy target. Louis L’Amour would have been proud.

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The payoff at the end of the trail is this balancing rock situation and a magnificent view of the untrammeled desert beyond.

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The ocotillo or Devil’s buggy whip was putting on a show across the park. A veritable forest of the thorny plants grows near the west entrance to the park. I went out there at sunset hoping to get a great sunset I could silhouette the branches and flowers against. The sunset was a dud so I did the best I could. The wind was blowing hard, causing the stems to sway and blurring most of the flowers. Right at dark a bunch of humming birds descended on flowers, so that was pretty neat.

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Return To The Bend – Day 1

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Things got weird there for a bit, but we finally pulled a the trigger on a return trip to Big Bend National Park for this year’s Spring Break. I’ve been to Big Bend 4 times now. Gina has been 3 and this was Abby’s first trip. All the previous trips involved camping for multiple nights inside the park. This time we decided to go the radical route of staying in some sort of fixed lodging in Terlingua, a tiny town just outside the the western entrance to the park.

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I found this weird sign draped over a pile of junk in Grandfalls, Texas. A tiny burg a couple of hours north of the park.

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Gina somehow discovered the duplexes offered by the Chisos Mining Company. We were placed in the Mesa View unit on the outskirts of town. My Mom and Dad rented the other side of the duplex. The place was fantastic. A bedroom, bath, kitchen and sitting area. Plenty big, quiet and way more comfortable than camping even in Daisy. I recommend the place, but don’t go thinking it’s going to be like the condo you always rent at the beach on the Redneck Riviera. CMC also offers traditional motel rooms along with small cabins in an area they call Easter Egg Valley. We didn’t go inside any of those, but based on how they look from outside, I’d avoid relying on them for your lodging needs.

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The pastel colors are a thing with the CMC properties.

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Needing to kill some time until Nana and Gramps rolled into town, we headed up to the Terlingua Ghost Town to check out the famous pickin’ porch. Stand by for more on this quaint tourist draw in a later post.

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We got soon got word that Nana and Gramps were running later than expected so we headed into the park and down to the trail that runs into the downstream end of Santa Elena Canyon. The canyon is one of three seriously deep canyons inside the park carved by the Rio Grande. The walls at the exit of the canyon are 1,500 feet tall from the river.

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From the end of the canyon the river heads out across the Chihuahuan Desert.

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We finished off the day watching a magnificent sunset.

Creepy Diorama

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Abby was assigned to create a diorama based on a book. The book was called creepy carrots. She made the diorama with no help from anyone, except Gina helped her with placing the moss in the bottom of the box. I hadn’t gotten around to using my new backdrop system I got for Christmas. It has transformed my ghetto studio into my Ghetto Studio™. So I thought Abby, with her new haircut and freshly made diorama, would make a great subject. Abby was not in the mood to cooperate at all. I gave up after exactly 4 minutes. I still like the picture I got, though.

The Snow

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It’s been an unusually cold winter in Little Rock. We got a decent snowfall on Friday and I ventured out Saturday afternoon to see what the country looked like with a blanket of white. I headed west of town and wound up at Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Mt. Pinnacle was snow capped just like Pike’s Peak. Well, kinda like Pike’s Peak.

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The Maumelle River was frozen. I couldn’t figure out what those weird holes in the slush/ice were. They were scattered all about and not just under the cypress trees.

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Dinosaur tracks. I should’ve included a quarter in the photo to show scale. These tracks were huge, about 8 inches long.

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The Fog

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On Saturday we took off on one of our daylong drives and found ourselves high in the Ozarks in Pope County. Once we hit a certain elevation – about 1,800 feet – we were inside the clouds. Thick, wet clouds. The fog was thick that I got pretty freaked out driving on serpentine Highway 7. You couldn’t see the oncoming vehicles until they were about 60 feet away. I just kept imagining a big-ass truck appearing out of the fog across the centerline in my lane.

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We crossed over Pilot Mountain on our way home and I stopped a few times to get some snaps of the fog.