March 13 and 14-Big Bend National Park, TX

We tried to explore Big Bend in 2 days and we are pooped! It is an enormous park, just over 800,000 acres. It is in the southern tip of Texas bordered by the Rio Grande River. Across the river is Mexico. The Rio Grande isn’t too grand anymore as it is dammed a number of times (by both the US and Mexico) between it’s headwaters in Colorado and here. There are plenty of places where you could wade across without any trouble…but the border guards frown on it. Not too sparkly and clear either, it looks like chocolate milk it’s so full of silt. It’s beautiful territory though. Several gorgeous mountain ranges stick up from the Chihuahuan desert. Too hot for us as it was 95 today and can get up to 120-150 in the summer. We drove a lot and hiked as much as we could stand. Elsie hates it as she doesn’t like heat either. We had to leave her in the motorhome with the air conditioner on most of the time….poor puppy! Had a beautiful hike this afternoon up the Santa Elena Canyon. It’s a narrow canyon with sheer, steep, rock walls. People like to raft and kayak down it. We hiked along the US side (on our right in the pictures) and the other side of the canyon is Mexico. We are getting ready to move on in the morning...doing laundry and cooking a turkey! Nice to be plugged in so we have to take advantage of it!