Big Bend National Park - Redux

Some of you might remember that I bought a new car at the end of January last year and christened it with a two-day roadtrip to White Sands National Monument and a brief visit to Big Bend National Park on the way home to Austin. The reason for short-timing Big Bend on that initial go-around was that I had failed in my trip planning to check with the myriad Texas independent school districts to see when Spring Break was scheduled. All the kids I would have expected (had it occurred to me to check) to be at South Padre Island or Port Aransas, went camping at Big Bend that weekend with their extended families, and all of their best friends - in multiple cars, of course. I drove straight in the west gate and out the north gate. The place was packed.

This time I did check the school schedules and don't remember seeing any kids! That's weird, isn't it? These first pictures are multi-frame panoramas. Click on any of the pictures for a larger view.

I departed Austin at 04:30 and entered the north gate at 11:00 with only one gas stop en route - did I mention it's a long way? I thought I'd give you a brief overview here of the two areas I'd be exploring. First is the Chisos Basin, surrounded* as you might expect by the Chisos Mountains. The elevation varies from about 2800' at the Park entrance and 3800' at Panther Junction (at the base of the mountains) over the 30 mile approach. The view above is about 27mi from Panther Junction. The highest peak, just about in the middle, is Emory Peak at 7832' and the average elevation of the basin floor is about 5000'. 

*surrounded except for a V-shaped break in the west wall of the basin styled a "window".

The second of the three sections of the park is the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, which wanders south and west through the Chihuahuan desert from the (east-west) Panther Junction Road down the west side of the Chisos Mountains towards the Rio Grande. The view above is looking east at the Chisos from two or three miles away, perhaps two miles south of the Panther Junction Road. Though the desert itself holds some charms, my primary interest in the drive south was the geology on display.

This very similar view has a more interesting foreground, and it's a little closer to the mountains. About midway across the span of mountains look for the V-shaped "window" into the basin. You can miss it because the east wall of the basin blends well with the west.

The third major section of the park - which I did not visit - heads southeast towards the major RV campground in the park, Rio Grande Village, formerly Boquillas, TX. Boquillas existed "to service mining operations in Boquillas del Carmen, Mexico just across the Rio Grande."

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These next few pictures are simply details of the Chihuahuan desert I stopped to shoot inside the Basin and on the drive to Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande. I don't know if this is Cholla cactus or not, but I was wary enough to stay the hell away from it. Google it to see why.

This view gives you an idea of the roadside flora within the Chisos Basin. Note how crowded everything is; the Basin clearly stores more ground water than the typical desert floor does. Many of the plants are similar to those outside, but not all. You wouldn't find that pine tree, for example,  on the drive south to the river.

Here's another cactus mystery. I know there's a purple prickly pear variety that looked something like this (lower left) at the visitor center but I didn't stop to read the description. And this doesn't really look like the pictures of Opuntia macrocentra on the AZ Plant Lady's website. Any authorities out there?