Day 22                        December 21, 2009                 Davis Mountains TX

We spent the day in the Davis Mountains. The scenery was wonderful as we toured a 70 mile scenic drive. We stopped at Davis Mountain State Park to check out the birds. A long time volunteer named Bert has, for years, set out multiple feeders that bring in many birds. We saw juncos, wrens, towhees, woodpeckers, thrashers, titmice, cardinals and pyrrhuloxia. All of this was wonderful but the highlight of the day was a life bird, the Montezuma Quail also drawn to the feeders.

Day 23                        December 22, 2009                 McDonald Observatory

The University of Texas at Austin has a large astronomical observatory on a mountain top outside of Fort Davis, TX. When we visited this area a few years ago we attended a “Star Party” at night. Today we took a daytime tour of the facilities. We heard an informative and entertaining presentation about the sun and got to see live images of the sun. Unfortunately it was cloudy so we were also shown images of the sun from a few days ago when it was sunny. Next we toured the 107” Harlan Smith telescope. We walked up five flights and got to stand next to the huge 116 ton telescope tube while our guide talked about the design of the telescope and some of the current research underway using the instrument. Looking for planets around other stars is a big piece of the current activity. Our last stop (not including the gift shop;-) was the Hobby-Eberly telescope with an effective aperture of 362 inches!! A normal telescope of this size would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This one was built for about $20 million. The cost savings included an ingenious segmented mirror made of 91 hexagonal elements, each three feet wide. A computer keeps them aligned so they act like a single 30 foot diameter piece of glass. The other major savings was the drive system which only moves in azimuth. Elevation motion depends on the rotation of the earth. They cannot see the whole sky every night but through the course of a year, 70 % of the sky is visible and they have an incredibly powerful instrument they could never have afforded otherwise. The concept has been so successful that a twin telescope is being built in South Africa. (Could you tell Carl really enjoyed this!!)

Day 24                        December 23, 2009                 Highlights of Alpine, TX

We spent a lazy morning around the coach. In the afternoon we walked around Alpine. There were several surprisingly nice craft and jewelry shops along the main street. There is also a Museum of the Big Bend in town but, unfortunately it was closed this afternoon. We restocked our food supplies and called it a day.

Day 25                        December 24, 2009                 Big Bend National Park

We began the day with a mini-crisis. It snowed last night and there was lots of ice around this morning. Not complaining, but it is part of the story. As we tried to close the slide-outs in preparation for departing, the ice that had formed on top of the slide awnings jammed in the awning roller and prevented the slides from closing. No problem thought Carl, I’ll just climb up on to the roof and clear away the ice. The good news is that our motorhome is very well insulated. We know that since none of the ice had melted off the roof! To keep from falling off the roof and killing himself, Carl carefully crawled across the roof, hung over the edge and cleared away the ice that was causing the problem. Amazingly, the ice up there was over a half inch thick. Well, so much for our mini-crisis. We headed south to Big Bend and were treated to rugged mountain vistas and huge stretches of Chihuahuan dessert. The Texas-Mexico border is the Rio Grande River. The river makes two dips as it travels eastward; a small dip in the west and a larger dip where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Big Bend National Park is at the bottom of the western dip. Consisting of over 800 thousand acres of mountains and dessert and river carved canyons, we have wanted to visit Big Bend for a long time but, as you can imagine, this place is off the beaten track. As we were driving around the campground in search of a nice site, a gorgeous red and black vermillion flycatcher landed on a signpost next to us. OK we decided, we’ll take this site. The flycatcher even returned a while later as we were eating lunch. In the late afternoon a short hike treated us to roadrunners, gnatcatchers, kinglets and a distant pink mountainside as the sun set. We will spend seven full days here and we are psyched.

Day 26                        December 25, 2009                 Canyons at Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all of our Christian family and friends. Our day began with a ride and then hike to Boquillas Canyon. The Rio Grande is pretty small and lethargic this time of year but over the eons it has carved a 1500 foot deep canyon in the mountains that blocked its path. As we hiked along the river towards the mouth of the canyon, we found occasional “Gift Shops”. Local Mexicans cross the river to leave a small selection of handicrafts and a donation jar. Often we could see someone across the river keeping an eye on their stuff. Near the mouth of the canyon we came to the singer.  This guy had paddled across in a canoe and was serenading the hikers. Along the edge of the trail was a donation cup. You’ve got to love that entrepreneurial spirit. Where’d they learn that anyway ? J.Next stop was the ruins of an old house and motel along the trail to the hot springs. There were several people in the 105 degree spring water even though the air was in the low 40’s. After lunch back at the coach, we walked the full length of the nature trail we had started yesterday. It led steadily up to the top of a hill offering great views of the park, campground, the Chisos Mountains to the north and the Sierra Del Carmen mountains in Mexico.

Day 27                        December 26, 2009                 Chisos Mountains.

We began our day with an informative ranger led hike on the topic of Nature’s Supermarket. We learned about the nutritional and medicinal uses of many of the native plants of the Chuahuan Desert. We also learned that the ranger grew up in Dorchester, MA and lived for a while in Randolph. Small world indeed. We next drove up into the Chisos mountains. From the Rio Grande at 1,800 ft, we climbed (in the car of course) to 5,400 feet into the Chisos Basin. Surrounding the basin is a circle of mountains up to 9,000 feet high. Very dramatic scenery. We had lunch in the lodge and used their WiFi on our phones to check emails. Then it was off on a couple of short hikes showcasing more of the beautiful mountain scenery.  Late afternoon we drove back to the campground, relaxed a while before dinner then attended an evening ranger program about the very early inhabitants of this area. It was a great day all around.

Day 28                        December 27, 2009                 Santa Elena Canyon.

Today we explored more of the riches of Big Bend. We drove 60 miles west across the park to Santa Elena Canyon where the Rio Grande enters the park. All along our route were a succession of magnificent mountain vistas and cultural artifacts from early settlements in the region. The rugged, eroded mountains were each more stunning than the previous one but the trip saved the best for last. Santa Elana Canyon, carved by the Rio Grande during flood seasons, is now 1,500 feet deep. In some places it is only 30 feet wide. The hike into the canyon switchbacked up steeply for several hundred feet then sloped gently along a ledge on the canyon wall leading down to the river about ¾ mile into the canyon. It is a beautiful spot, certainly worth the drive and the hike.