grrrrrrowl...

Greetings one and all. I’m starting to write this blog as I relax in a campground at Big Bend National Park in Texas, but not sure where I’ll be by the last paragraphs of this posting…
I’ll start with a funny place name I saw in Texas (I think, or Louisiana): Woman Yelling Creek. Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind THAT name?
When I last left you, I was sitting at a Starbucks in Galveston while simultaneously getting my car washed. Even when vacationing I multi-task! Galveston is quite a cool town, as beach towns go, and I’d love to have spent more time there. But as noted, I have an obligation to be back in Sacramento pretty soon to earn some money, so at this point I have to sacrifice quality for quantity. Sigh…
I intended to drive to San Antonio to visit my cousin who lives there, but having not had a shower for a while, I decided I had to find one before I got to their house. Being a member of 24-hour Fitness Clubs, I knew there were some clubs in Texas and I could walk in and use the shower facilities to get good and scrubbed up. Unfortunately there were no clubs in the San Antonio area so I had to detour a bit into Houston, which had about a dozen of them. It was a successful foray – until I missed the turnoff for the beltway that goes around Houston and had to drive all the way downtown to catch the freeway towards San Antonio. Which of course was under construction, and bumper-to-bumper even though it was Saturday. Again, sigh…
My family visit in San Antonio was fun, though. We went downtown to the world-famous Riverwalk and had dinner and cruised around the Alamo, and I crashed there for the night so I was able to get showered up for the next portion of my camping trip. I’d looked on the map and estimated that Big Bend was maybe a 4-6 hour drive, at most, so I targeted to leave Sunday morning at about 9am. I was way off - Big Bend is truly in the middle of nowhere. 413 miles later I was rolling into the campground, still with enough light to set up camp and walk a mile over to the lodge/restaurant/grocery area to identify my ambitious hike for the next day. The plan was to loop around the mountains and, in the middle of the hike, summit the highest of the peaks at 7800 feet (starting at about 5300 feet) – a total of 12 miles. I hadn’t had a challenge like that for quite a while, so I was a bit concerned about my fitness. Who knew Texas had mountains like this? Lots of people, I guess, because despite it being Sunday night, the tent portion of the campground was about 90% full and the lodge looked about half-full – all at the end of September. Admittedly, the weather is fairly pleasant – warm at least (but thunderstorms, too). Driving in the route that I did, at least 300 of the miles were desert – boring to some people – so you really have to want to get here. But it is spectacularly beautiful, with jagged peaks all around the campground. And I hear it’s quite the rock-climber’s mecca.
Well the best-laid plans have a way of going awry – in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I got up early, packed up my tent and headed over to the restaurant associated with the lodge, because they have a good buffet that would fill me up for my ambitious hike. I hit the trail just a bit after 8am and it was as strenuous as I’d hoped. I’d gotten about 2 miles uphill and my heart was pumping pretty hard when I came around a corner and was face-to-face with…two mountain lions! Naturally my heart raced a little faster – they were about 80-100 feet away and not scared of me at all. I started hollering at them and ‘looking large’, as they tell you to do, but to no effect. I snapped a couple of photos but then one started towards me and I decided it was time to put the camera down and pick up some rocks. I can multi-task but not that well! I started tossing rocks and the first one slunk off the trail, but the one behind him needed a few more rocks in her direction. (I randomly assigned genders to them. I know nothing about mountain lions and never expected to see one, since they are notoriously reclusive.) So they both headed uphill into the bushes, which of course was the direction I was heading. I cautiously proceeded up the trail, throwing more rocks at the bushes where they’d disappeared, and telling them I had an arm like Nolan Ryan’s. (I can’t throw like him, but I’ll bet my arm looks sorta like his.)
Another ¾ mile up the trail, I saw another one. She was crossing the trail about 50 feet in front of me and then stopped in the bushes to watch me. I could see her face so I snapped one picture and then tossed some rocks at her, which got her out and up the hill again. Now I had a decision: was this one of the two I’d seen earlier? And if so, where was the other one – circling around behind me? Were they protecting something like a den of kittens? Given my lack of knowledge about cougars, I reluctantly turned around and headed down the trail, yelling my frustrations at them with every step. I took a photo of some “cat scat” that was on the trail, to show what she’d been eating. (The only scat on the trail after my first encounter might have been my own.)
I went down to the visitor center to report my sightings, as they tell you to do, and gave them my account and photos. The pictures weren’t all that great; wish I’d used the zoom but obviously I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. I don’t know if they closed the trail after me or not; the wildlife ranger thought that the one coming towards me might have been more curious than aggressive. Of course, I wasn’t going to wait and find out. He also thought I’d probably seen a third one, not one of the first two, and that maybe they were all siblings. They were big, about the size of my dogs, which means they were about 100-120 pounds. I had my trekking poles with me (an unusual occurance; I don’t often use them) so I may have been able to successfully fight off an attack but anyway, we’ll never know – and I’m glad.
So my nice 12-mile hike was ruined, and I settled for another 5-mile loop to add to the one I’d already done. As noted, the place is simply spectacular and I need to go back there. Move over, Glacier, I might have a new #1 favorite for this trip! There are also hot springs right on the banks of the Rio Grande which were in the wrong direction for me to go back to (it’s a BIG park) and were, unfortunately, under water as the Rio Grande was running pretty high. So that’s another incentive to return. And a third incentive is the drive OUT of the park. I went south through an adjacent state park and down along the river for about 50 miles and it was everything I could want in a road: windy, dippy, great scenery (if you like the desert, which I do) and not a soul on it. I had a blast driving down to Presidio and then north through Texas up to the Guadalupe Mountains, which is a national park on the border between Texas and New Mexico.
Every mile or two I’d see a tarantula crossing the road. Why did the tarantula cross the road? I guess to get to the other side. I didn’t want to run over those cute things so I missed most of them. I’d already gotten a photo of one on the trail, as well as a scorpion I encountered in the bathroom. (I guess it was a beastie sort of day.)
Guadalupe Mountain is the highest peak in Texas at 8749 feet. There was a 8.4 mile round trip hike up to the peak with a 3000 foot elevation gain, so I did that one the next morning to offset my disappointment from the previous day’s hike. It was one of the toughest 8 mile hikes I’ve ever done – it took me 1:52 to the top and 1:35 back down, because the footing was so treacherous. Fortunately I’d brought my poles again (in case I was attacked!) and they helped on the descent. The park was just 50 miles away from Carlsbad Caverns so I drove into New Mexico and headed underground (after fielding yet another call from an interested employer – it’s hard to stay retired).
The self-guided tour takes about 2+ hours and I must have shot about 30 photos, none of which came out very well. Either I used the flash and got over-exposed shots (because many of the interesting features are already lit) or I turned the flash off and got blurry or under-exposed shots. I guess I’ll leave cave photography to the experts with better cameras. And I know I’m overusing the term ‘spectacular’, but ere are so many cool things in this cave that you just get jaded after a while. Stalactites, stalagmites, crystals, pools, bottomless pits, … Definitely worth the trip.
Naomi’d asked for a postcard to be sent from Roswell, NM, site of the supposed alien crash-landing in 1947 where the government captured, and is still keeping, aliens. Of course, that’s the main tourist attraction in town, so finding the postcard was easy – but not finding the post office so I could buy a stamp! Long story short, I eventually found someone who gave me a stamp and I got the thing mailed. But I was running out of daylight, so I drove up into the mountains near Ruidoso Downs hoping to find a campsite before dark. No luck, so since it was dark and the stretch I was driving was supposed to be beautiful (and I didn’t want to miss it) I took off on a Forest Service road and went about 2 miles up this dirt road and parked at a wide spot in the road. I checked into Chateau Prius for the night at about 8:30 after basking in the glow of the Milky Way, which was really bright and clear. It got down to about 45 degrees and I eventually closed the window in the car because I was cold. I got moving about 6:45 the next morning (this morning) and in all that time, not a single car came up that service road, even though I was just a couple of miles off of the highway. I could have pitched my tent right in the middle of the road!
So today I rolled on up to Santa Fe, which is in the northern part of New Mexico, and took the scenic route. It really is a beautiful state once you get out of the flats. I was looking to get my oil changed in Santa Fe but didn’t find one of those quickie places, so I decided to push north and west and ended up in a motel in Durango, Colorado, where I sit as I finish (and post) this missive. One of the road segments I drove, Hiway 64 west, is one of the most beautiful drives of the trip. It is waaaay up in the mountains, I’m guessing perhaps as high as 9000 feet, and the fall colors are already showing in a big way. Most of it is ranches and farming, and so you have this pastoral scenery of old barns, livestock, rolls of hay, and a stream running through it, surrounded by forests of alder and pines. Except for the winters, I could live up there!
I hope this finds all well and happy. I plan to visit Mesa Verde tomorrow, where there are mysteriously-abandoned cave dwellings. Then I’ll head in the direction of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks for some more good hiking…stay tuned! You won’t want to miss my next animal encounter (but I may want to!)