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June 29, 1999 Tuesday
After a late breakfast at the Castle, we headed out on hw 46 to Boerne, where we stocked up at the HEB and hooked up with I10. The trip out West was quite hot, especially since my Mustang was wanting to overheat and we had to run the heater most of the way. We got to the Davis Mountains State Park at about 9pm, set up camp and made it to the McDonald Observatory Star Party by about 10. There was a pretty good group there; we looked at several objects, including the Moon, Venus, Mars, and a star cluster. They had about four telescopes out, ranging in size from about 6 inches to about 14 or so. There was also a slide show, in which I noticed a few images said "C. Robert O'Dell" at the bottom. He is one of the astronomy professors at Rice. We stayed until the end of the star party before returning to camp.
June 30, 1999 Wednesday
This morning we got off about 11am, but missed turn off to the Fort Davis National Historic Site, so we went on to Balmorhea Springs up near I10. As it turned out, our State park pass was still good from last night, so we saved the entry fee. We swam a little while, but it was cold and Mel didn't like the fishes much, so we ate lunch and went back to Ft. Davis. It rained at the historical site , but it was still cool. The car's still running hot, so I was glad for the rain to cool things down. Alpine is the largest town around here (pop 5,637) so we stopped at the True Value and picked up a few camping items we needed. Tomorrow is rafting, then we'll move to the Chisos Basin area.
July 1, 1999 Thursday
We ended up spending last night at the Easter Egg Motel, just a few miles from the Desert Sports office between Study Butte and Teralingua. The rafting trip was fun. We spent from 9:30 to about 3pm on the water with our guide, JR, and another couple, Rob and Jana from Arizona, with a couple of short hiking sidetrips (Texas and Mexico) and lunch on the Mexican bank. I swam a bit, and rowed a bit too. My arms got a little burned, but I was glad for the umbrellas JR brought. This afternoon we made camp in the Chisos Basin of Big Bend National Park , space 21. It rained some, but we got the tent up okay. I've had too much sun today, so we haven't done much else.
July 2, 1999 Friday
This morning we hiked the 2.4 miles each way to Lost Mine Peak. It was nice and we had lunch at the summit. We ate an early supper (foil dinners) and hit the Window trail about 5pm. The trailhead was right in the campsite, so it was easy getting started. We hiked to the Window (2.6 miles) fairly quickly, it was slightly downhill most of the way. Once there, is was pretty cool, although we almost lost the trail a couple of times in the stream bed. The rock bottom of the stream was smooth and etched into channels. A small amount of water was flowing out the "window" to form the second tallest falls in Texas. We got as close as we dared, but didn't quite forget about the sign that read "Slick Rocks, High Cliff". On the rock wall near the edge was a very well camouflaged frog.
July 3, 1999 Saturday
This morning we drove down to the Rio Grande Village and the Boquillas del Carmen river crossing. We paid a boatman $2 each for a ride to Mexico, then hired two burrows at $3 each for the 1 mile ride into town. One guy kept trying to be our guide (for $5) but we turned him down. The village was only a few buildings, but the landscape was very nice. A couple of local girls hitched our donkeys ($1 each) then we looked around the one shop and ate lunch on the patio (burritos and Coke). Mel and I looked over the souvenir items and nifty rocks, and headed back to Texas once we were out of small bills. On the way back to camp, we took a short side trip to a hot springs on the river (and a good excuse to let the car cool down too). The springs were pretty much ruins, and it was too hot to swim in them anyway, even if we weren't sunburned and wearing jeans. The trip was justified, though, by the ancient rock art we saw on the cliffs. We spent the afternoon hanging out in camp (I read from my Anne McCaffrey book) then made tortilla hot dogs. About 6:30 we hit the Window Trail again, this time with the plan to take the Oak Springs branch for an additional 0.8 miles of hilly terrain and a view of the falls from the bottom. As it turned out, the trail went right over the side of the mountain, and was very difficult. By the time we got to a good falls-viewing spot, it was after 8, and we were getting anxious to get off the mountain. The climb back got pretty intense, with the wind coming up and the sun going down, but when we started getting close to the end, we started singing and joking and felt much better.
July 4, 1999 Sunday
This morning we drove from Big Bend all the way up to Monahans Sandhills. We made pretty good time until after lunch when the air temperature got hot enough to slow us down to prevent boiling out the coolant in the car. It was an hour or so before the office at the Sandhills closed when we got there, so we rented a couple of sleds and hit the dunes. It was a lot of fun, but also very tiring. Once we managed to get our tent set up in the shifting sands and some food in our bellies, we hit the showers (for the first time since the Easter Egg hotel.) We drove into Odessa looking for some fireworks, but they'd done it on Saturday, so we settled for a movie ( Wild Wild West). Afterwards, we headed back to camp.
July 5, 1999 Monday
We broke camp at the Sandhills this morning and got back on I10 for the drive back to San Antonio. The radiator temperature was doing a little better, mostly because we've learned how to handle it. On a whim we stopped at Fort Lancaster State Historic Park, and I'm glad we did. It was an interesting ruin, and I found information there on its occupation during the Civil War by the W. P. Lane Rangers, of which my Great Great Great Uncle William Keith was a member. We ate lunch at the park bench at the Fort, and headed on for the Caverns of Sonora. The Caverns were magnificent, although the tours were overpriced, and we were only able to take one of them. Mel got a bag of dirt to sift for pretty rocks, but I went to help a lady who'd locked her keys in her car and by the time we got back the sifting water was shut down. After that we went straight on home, and crashed back at the apartment.
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