Escaping Big Bend

     It's been a busy little week, as Debbie and I have worked our way up and down the Texas landscape, taking in all that Texas has to offer.  Up in West Texas, we were up a few feet in altitude, and the weather didn't seem to want to cooperate.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  We spent our last days in Big Bend touring the west side of the park.  It is a massive park, over 800,000 acres in all. But there are only 3 roads that lead you through the park, and only 2 of those roads lead you out of the park.  Keep that thought in mind for a little later.

The road skirted the Chisos Mountain Range, and led us down to the Rio Grande and a long forgotten military fort at Castolan.  The fort was built to protect the few settlers in the area from cross border skirmishes , but didn't stay very long.  Even today, the NPS abandons the ranger station there during the summer months, because of the unrelenting heat.  Daytime temps regularly soar up to the 120's and ground tempt will actually reach 170 degrees.  There's no reason for anyone to be there.  We passed through some very interesting rock formations getting there, showing the results of volcanic activity millions of years ago.

 When the Rio Grande was rolling, there were farmers in the valley, able to use it for irrigation.  But that was long ago.  There are magnificent cliffs over 1500 feet high, on the Mexican side of the river, showing how powerful the river once was.
      In the distance we could see a pretty significant dust storm coming at us, so we headed back across the park for our campground. As we arrived, the winds were blowing pretty good, and soon we lost power to the campground.

 Not a big deal for me as I have a generator, but with the temps hovering at about 91, a few of the campers would have loved a little A/C.  We soon learned that the wind caused some issues with the electrical wires and up toward Panther Junction there was a pretty good brush fire burning.  Soon, campers from other campgrounds started arriving at ours, having been evacuated from the fire area.

 After speaking with some, and confirming the location of the fire, we discovered that we had no escape route from the fire, since our road out was shut off by the fire.  It sounds worse than it was, but the NPS never advised us of the situation, and rumor control was running rampant through the park.  Our Campground Host even mentioned evacuating across the river in Mexico! Now that would have been exciting.  We survived the night, and in the morning, still with no electricity, and word that the road was open, we decided to make our break out of Big Bend.

As we approached Panther Junction, we could see some pretty high columns of smoke as the fire was still burning, and lots of charred acres alongside the road.  It looks like the NPS was just going to let it burn itself out, as there were no firefighter to be seen.  The following day I sent an email to the Public Information Officer for the Park, letting them know that a little contact with the campers would have been nice.

We went almost 20 hours with no power and a brush fire threatening us, with no information from the NPS.  I got a nice note back saying that those issues would be discussed in the upcoming After Action Brief.  They probably threw it in the trash, but at least I felt better.
      We passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint later on in the day, and I gave one of my baseball cards to the K9 handler working.  He seemed to get a kick out of it.  We spent the night at the Marathon Motel and RV Park in Marathon, which was a nice little overnight park. Best thing was it was a Passport America park, and we stayed for $17.00, which was half off.  Gotta love a bargain!  The girl at the front desk was very friendly, and we met a gentleman who seemed to be fascinated with Big Red.  He gave me his business card showing him involved in the water pump business and claimed to be heading for Guatemala.  You never know who you're going to run into out here on the road.
     Tomorrow we'll be at Randy and Retha's in San Angelo, where we will be treated like a king and queen!  We stiffed them last Fall, as we had business to attend to in San Diego in September.  But they'll be coming through NY next September, and we're putting together a trip down to NYC.  That should be exciting.
     I'm a few days behind with this, but I'm hoping to sit back and enjoy some very nice weather here in South Padre Island.  Traveling like this does tire you out.  Kinda like shoveling snow everyday back home!!!