How Denisa and Mark enjoy the mountain top differently . . . and a bad ending to our day

On our first full day at Big Bend National Park, we were up early. In fact, we watched the sun rise over the mountains as we made the 45-minute drive to the Chisos Mountain basin in the center of this big park. After talking to the ranger yesterday, we knew that we had to be up early to get a parking place for some of the most popular trails within this most popular part of this popular national park.

As the sky got brighter, we got closer to the Chisos Mountains that were covered in a haze of wispy clouds this morning.

We had really planned to hike the Window Trail this morning. But when we saw an open parking place for the coveted Lost Mine Trail, we snagged it in a hurry. With only 15 parking spots for this second most popular trail in the entire national park, we changed our plan for the day. We suddenly found ourselves going up the mountain to the Lost Mine, rather than down the mountain to the Window.

Low clouds in the mountains are fun to watch. This morning's heavy clouds completely filled the valley below us.

The early morning sun was just lighting up the mountain peaks above us as we started the hike. The other advantage to getting up so early is that the temperature is comfortable in long pants and long sleeves. With high temperatures forecast is the upper 80s and 90s this week, we were soaking up the cool this morning.

As we hiked further, those mountain tops were getting closer.

Mark and Denisa plod up these mountain hikes at about the same speed. But when we get to the top, our behaviors are completely different. Denisa is satisfied to have made it to the end, with the best views of the mountains around us.

Mark, on the other hand, is always searching for the best view point, or trying to get to some higher knob or perch that no one else would consider climbing.

He enjoys being that person that everyone else is worried about on that perch where no one else would go. Now Denisa has to move from her easy end-of-the-hike spot to try to get a picture of Mark's antics.

She would rather be taking a picture of the birds in the bare trees here at the top of the mountain.

Not all of Mark's extra climbs are above us. He looked down and saw this light colored rock that looked like a camel. Can you see the camel in the picture below?

He said, "I'm going to ride that camel," and he was off down that slick rock to stand beside the camel's head.

Meanwhile, Denisa is repositioning herself to take a picture of Mark riding that rock camel far below her.

Sometimes Denisa follows Mark, and we got to this tippy top point of the Lost Mine Trail together. Denisa liked sitting here, enjoying the view.

But Mark enjoys climbing on top of that tippy-top, just because it's there.

Denisa enjoyed her spot that is now above the surrounding mountains. But Mark is just wondering if he can get to that funny-shaped rock pillar on the right hand side of the picture below.

It took some rock scrambling, but he managed to make that climb. He enjoys standing right by that tall rock column that no one else would consider exploring. Turns out that it was bigger than it looked from a distance, because you can barely see Mark standing in the "palm."

This scramble was far enough that Denisa had to get out the other camera just to verify that is Mark standing so far away.

Denisa enjoys sitting very still in one place, waiting for the blue birds to come closer for a picture that doesn't even need a zoom lens.

She found that these are Mexican jays, and they are very willing to come closer to hikers that are sitting very still. Denisa enjoys that.

But Mark has now spotted another rock structure further away, so Denisa is going to have to use that zoom lens in that direction. It's hard to see him standing up on the far left side of the ridge.

Yep, that's Mark--doing what he enjoys on mountain tops.

He has his phone with him, and he snapped a picture of the ridge of rock directly in front of him. Thankfully, he had enough sense to recognize how narrow that fin of rock is and how risky it would be to continue with straight drop-offs on both sides.

He swings the camera back to where Denisa is still relaxing in her tippy-top spot. She leaned over but you can barely see her.

We definitely enjoy the mountain top differently! After a relaxing hour for Denisa at the top, and an hour of Mark gaining more steps and elevation change, it's time to head back down the trail. The clouds have reappeared, and the sun is no longer lighting up the mountains around us as we descended. They almost look like the muted tint of a painting in the background.

Even though we enjoy the top differently, we both really liked the Lost Mine Trail. We understand why the parking lot is always full, and why it's the second most popular trail at Big Bend National Park. It's supposed to be a 4.8-mile hike with 1,130 feet in elevation gain. But with all of Mark's extra scrambling it was 5.8 miles with 1,332 feet in elevation gain for him.

We ate our picnic lunch, and felt rested enough that we decided to try another hike. We had read about the Pine Canyon trail, and so we headed that way. We don't have to worry about the parking here, because the trail head is a six-mile drive on a four-wheel-drive-only road. When we visited here eight years ago, we had only a little car. So now that we have a four-wheel-drive pickup, we are excited to get to explore some trails that weren't an option to us on that first trip. We were two miles down the Glenn Springs gravel road when our rear driver's side tire started losing air fast. It went flat in a hurry.

We found that a sharp rock had punctured the tire right between the tread.

Mark had never had to change a flat on this pickup, so we learned where the jack is stored and how to get the full-size spare out of storage. Denisa loves that Mark is good at situations like this, and never loses his positive attitude. This flat tire will change our plans for where we will hike and drive during our stay here. We never did make that Pine Canyon hike. The clouds kept it cool, and we had a beautiful view, but this was certainly a bad ending to a very good first day at Big Bend National Park.

We made it to Big Bend National Park!

We left Seminole Canyon State Park in the morning, starting an unusually long (for us) drive in the motor home. We have been trying to get camping reservations in the area around Big Bend National Park for weeks. But we found that all the sites are already booked for Texas's spring break week. In addition, campgrounds charge a premium during that week. So we have adjusted our arrival time and hurried our schedule in order to arrive five days before spring break. So this drive to our next campground was a longer-than-normal 223 miles. We approached Big Bend National Park from the northeast side, and we started seeing some of the layers of mountains and buttes as we got closer.

Part of that long drive included a stop to fill up the motor home with diesel. We were driving into an area known for its lack of service stations and grocery stores. So we wanted to arrive with full fuel tanks and refrigerator. Even though this last fill-up wasn't inexpensive at $4.45 per gallon of diesel, it is cheaper than what we would find down the road.

It was 174 miles and took almost three hours to drive to Persimmon Gap, the less-used northeast entrance of Big Bend National Park. It takes an hour to drive from one end of the park to the other, so we don't plan to be in this section of the park again. Shortly after entering the park, we decided to pull over and take a hike. We found room in the trail head parking lot for the motor home, and started across the desert floor on the Dog Canyon Trail.

There's no shade, and it was in the 80s in the afternoon sun as we made our way through the cactus and prickly bushes of the desert.

After a mile we reached the dry creek bed, where we hiked the rest of the way on river rocks and sand.

This seems like a good time to mention that we are loving the tangerines that we picked off Denisa's Mother's tree in the Rio Grande Valley. All the citrus fruit needed to be off the trees, and we filled her refrigerator and ours with these delicate tangerines. But they are great hiking companions, and they are a great thirst-quencher and energy-booster on a hot day like today. This tangerine was as big as Denisa's hand, and very juicy.

As we approached the mouth of the canyon, we saw the rock walls were getting taller.

In fact, you will have to look carefully to see Mark in his navy shirt at the base of this canyon wall in the picture below.

We love hikes through deep canyons, and we found one here at Dog Canyon. 

It's hard to keep Mark on the floor of the canyon, with so many massive rocks just begging to be climbed. He liked the looks of this narrow fin, so he decided to climb as far as he could. You can see that he made some progress up that narrow fin that looked quite big with him standing beside it.

But that fin was actually quite small when compared to the massive canyon wall on the other side of it.

Dog Canyon was named for the pet that was escorting its family through this canyon. The wagon was found here, but the remains of the family were never located. The loyal dog was still standing beside the wagon when it was found, so the canyon has been known as Dog Canyon ever since.

We hiked all the way through the canyon, and then turned around to head back to the motor home. On our way back, we spotted this dark hole at the base of one of the walls. We saw movement, so we zoomed in with the camera.

That's when we found that hole was a wasp nest. They were crawling up and around that hole, buzzing us if we got close. We picked up speed and got out of there faster than we planned.

The total hike was 4.7 miles, with the last mile through that flat shadeless desert. We can see the silhouettes of the mountains of Big Bend National Park, and we're excited to get to that part of this big park.

After our hike, it was another 50 miles through the national park to get to our campground on the other side, in the town of Terlingua. The speed limit inside this big park is 45 miles per hour, so we had over an hour of driving through Big Bend. By evening we were settled into our site at Study Butte RV Campground right outside of the national park in the quirky little town of Terlingua. We're glad that we finally made it to Big Bend National Park, and we were welcomed with the first sunset of our stay.

Can we bike the Canyon Rim Trail?

On the day that we arrived at Seminole Canyon State Park, we took the ranger-led hike down into the canyon. So the second day we were up early to do the 8.5-mile canyon rim trail that will look down into Seminole canyon. That's a pretty long trail, and we thought, "Can we bike the canyon rim trail?"

Those miles would certainly go by faster on a nice smooth trail on a bike. But a half-mile into the trail, we found that this isn't a nice smooth trail. After walking our bikes down some rocky steep sections, we decided to just leave them on the side of the trail.

We took some pictures on the rim of the canyon, and stowed our bikes where we could loop back and retrieve them after our hike.

We were glad to have the cloud cover this morning, but we don't have the pretty blue skies for our pictures. We also found that the dull skies and terrain made Mark blend into the scenery. Even though he's waving his arms, can you find Mark in the picture below?

He has successfully dressed in colors that camouflage him to the drab colors of the canyon and skies this morning.

Denisa's outfit isn't much better, but you can still see her on the left-side edge of this deep canyon wall.

Since we moved slower, we could see some details that we would have missed if we were on our bikes. We saw evidence of the fossils that are imbedded in the limestone at our feet here at Seminole Canyon rim.

We also can study the native flora at this slower pace. This is the ocotillo, that dots the desert horizon. They have large thorns on their long branches, and they can grow to heights that make Mark look short. These tall gangly plants aren't strong enough for building things, and they don't produce edible fruit, so they seem like a pretty worthless part of the desert environment.

But once a year the little blooms at the end of those tall stalks erupt into a tiny bouquet. For such a big plant, the blooms are quite small, but Denisa took a close-up to show that they are just starting to open.

Some times they have double blooms. This one was so heavy that it was weighing its gangly stalk over so that we could see it. Those little blooms are happening at the top of those tall branches so that they are hard to appreciate from ground level.

In the desert where flowers are rare, the bees are excited about the ocotillo blooms.

We hiked over two miles before we finally saw some water in the canyon. The ranger yesterday explained that these tall canyon walls were not formed from the flow of a river, but rather from the occasional rain and sand-blasted force of the west Texas wind.

As we walked further, we mentioned many times that we were glad we weren't on our bikes. This would have been no fun to try to avoid the rocks and stay safe on the canyon rim on a bike. The water below us got wider and the canyon walls got taller. We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

While the canyon rim that Mark is standing on seems sturdy . .  .

a close-up shot shows that it is riddled with a form of erosion that is called honey-comb. 

We have had this long trail to ourselves all morning, but we finally caught up with a family when we got to the Panther Cave overlook. We exchanged picture-taking duties with them. The dark spot behind Mark's left shoulder is one of the trail highlights--Panther Cave.

As we zoomed in closer, we could see the cave even though its entrance is covered by trees. We could also see that a tall chain-link fence surrounds the cave to keep unsupervised visitors out.

Zooming in even more, we could see that there is a boat dock and steps that lead to the cave entrance. Right now the water is too low, but usually boat tours can transport visitors for a close-up of the pictographs found in this cave. That tour requires a 45-minute boat ride through the Amistad recreation area to get to panther cave.

We realized that we could see the most famous of the pictographs when we walked further down the canyon rim.

Zooming in even further from our perch across the canyon, we can make out the panther that was painted on that cave wall an estimated 1,500 years (or more) ago. We have found the name-sake of panther cave!

When we visited the state park museum, we took a picture of the reproduction of the panther painting. With its colors brightened, it looks more like it did when its artist first painted it.

While the rest of the pictographs are largely hidden and protected by the roof of the cave . . .

we zoomed in to see them for ourselves.

At the state park museum we found a wall-sized recreation of this cave art that looked more like its original color and detail.

It was a long walk, but this was a fun place to find on this cloudy and cool morning.

Perched up on those tall canyon walls, we had a good sampling of the desert plants. Beside Mark we can see prickly pear cactus, sotol, yucca, and the arm of that gangly ocotillo. Behind Mark, we got our first view of the Rio Grande River this morning.

This canyon rim trail took us straight south to the Rio Grande River, where we can see Mexico on the other side.

Yes, we are still glad that we aren't trying to bike in these rocky and steep areas.

Perched on the border, we're not sure if this cardinal was singing in English or Spanish this morning.

We surveyed the border line between the United States and Mexico, but we didn't see any illegal aliens making the river crossing this morning.

With the heavy brush on both sides of the river and the tall canyon walls, this looks like an impossible place to make a border crossing. No border wall is needed in this section of Texas.

Being near the water, we found more birds in this section of the hike.

This pyrrhuloxia is a relative of the cardinal, and is called the "desert cardinal."

We also found mockingbirds, hanging out in those gangly ocotillo branches that aren't strong enough to support a nest.

On the return loop hike, we were away from the canyon views. So we hiked the last miles faster with less stops. After all the drab brown scenery, Denisa had to stop to take a picture of these brave purple and yellow blooms that can survive in these dry conditions.

The clouds had broken up and we finally had blue skies by the end of our hike. But that meant that we also had warmer temperatures for the last few miles. When we circled back to get our bikes, we had to walk them over more of those big rocks.

As we made our way up this steep and rocky section, we definitely can answer the question, "Can WE bike the canyon rim trail?" Yes, Mark could have biked it, but he would have missed much of the scenery because it would have taken all his concentration to steer a bike through the rocks. He doesn't think that he would have enjoyed the ride at all. But Denisa answers the question with a resounding, "No!"