Big Bend - South Rim hike

Pictures from our 15 mile hike to the South Rim of the Chisos. That included a side trip along the way to the top of Emory Peak, the second highest peak in Texas. It was a very awesome day!

Big Bend - South rim

Dave's Pictures from Big Bend

Here are Dave's pictures from Big Bend. I am really behind on all of this stuff!!

Big Bend (Dave)

Big Bend - Ernst Tinaja

After the Lost Mine hike, we drove across the park and out a bumpy road to get to the Ernst Tinaja hike. It was hot and thankfully short, low in the desert, and toured some really cool old layered rock formations. As we walked back into the gully, we were walking backward in time, geologically.

Big Bend - Ernst Tinaja

Big Bend - Lost Mine hike

This was a nice hike up the Lost Mine trail. It wasn't too long, but we gained some elevation and got to look around. It was windy at the top!

Big Bend - Lost Mines Hike

Big Bend - The Window hike

Our first night at Big Bend, the four of us did the short hike from next to our camp site to the Window. The Window is the break in the rock of the Chisos Basin through which all of the water in the basin exits to lower land below. The hike goes through a lot of different landscapes along the way and the rock right at the end is very polished. There were a few hikers there when we arrived, but they quickly left and we had the area to ourselves for sunset (the following day, everyone was there, so we were really lucky!). 

Big Bend - The Window

On our way to Big Bend

After getting picked up from the side of the highway by the tow truck and another truck for us extra passengers, we dropped off the truck at a mechanic's place in the middle of the night, and found a hotel that had some space. Fort Stockton is the biggest city in the area and has an oddly high number of hotels, used for housing workers that head out to the west Texas oil fields. We eventually got to sleep around 2:30am. Dave got up early to try to see about getting the truck fixed. The Ford dealership was booked solid, but another mechanic was able to help right away and we were on the road by late morning. We had a few hours between Fort Stockton and Big Bend through beautiful country on a beautiful day. A nice thing about arriving half a day later to Big Bend than we had originally intended (we were going to arrive in the middle of the night before) was that we arrived in day light and everything was fun to see. We talked with the rangers at Panther Junction to figure out what we should do. It turned out that there wasn't much/any water available on the Outer Loop, a backpacking trip, that we were hoping to do, so we instead were able to find a walk-up camp site at Chisos Basin to car camp at and do day trips from. We had come as early as we could so that we could get a walk up site before all of the spring break could arrive. It worked out! Pictures from this part of the journey are below.

Big Bend - To Big Bend, Fort Stockton, and campsite

Video with tow truck

Hopefully this works to post a video. Just wanted to share our excitement last night about the tow truck's arrival.

Tow truck

After sitting on the westbound side of I-10 for about two hours last night, from about 10:30pm to 12:30am, we were picked up by some AAA folks. Dave's truck was put on a flatbed and he rode with the tow truck and the rest of us went in an accompanying truck. We found a hotel with space after a couple of tries and all got a room together, finally getting to bed at about 2:30am.

We are in Fort Stockton, which is a place workers stay who work in the oil fields of west Texas. We had been about 34 miles east of town.

Dave is with the repair guy now, it is almost 10am now, and it is looking like we'll be able to head out soon to. Continue on our trip! In the meantime we've been piling on the calories and keeping clean in anticipation of upcoming hikes.

Leaving the Madrona Creek Ranch

We drove to Dave's family ranch and from there took the ranch truck west toward Big Bend.

We are currently waiting on the side of I-10 for a tow from AAA because the belt on the truck is loose. Unfortunately we have been waiting several hours but they should be here soon!

Gas in Fredericksburg

Lots o trucks

To Big Bend!

Kyle and I are driving toward Big Bend national park today! We're going with Dave and Kristina and will be gone for about a week. It is 8 or 9 hours west from Austin.

Beet and other stuff salad

I continue to experiment with foods. I tried a salad with beets, quinoa, kale, chickpeas, orange, grapefruit, and spinach. It was decent, but the beets were hard and I'm still learning about how to best flavor them.

Texas sunrise

Lake Georgetown

Matt visits

Matt Fox visited austin for a few days! He mostly stayed with another friend but I did see him several times. I found a wine with his name on it at the store before I saw him which was funny. He and I went to the Draught house one night and had a drink and some food truck food. We visited Mt Bonnell for the view and walked along Shoal Creek. Sunday, Kyle, Matt, and I had breakfast and then walked around Lake Georgetown.

Edward Tufte

Kyle was out of town in Boston and NYC until Friday last week. I came back from College Station Wednesday evening and Thursday went to a class about visualization and design by Edward Tufte. He is pretty well known and has books to go with it. My boss likes his stuff a lot so he sends his people to the class, so I went when he came to Austin. It was interesting, but repetitive.