Thursday 3/10/11



Last night we had to make the choice between riding the bicycles or hiking.  This morning, we were also faced with 2 choices.  There is a 6 hour hike to the high point in BBNP, Emory Peak, which is supposed to be very rugged and challenging, and affords a few bragging rights.  However, hiking Emory Peak would mean having no time to explore any of the rest of the park. Our second choice involved a combination of putting some miles on the truck both on and off road, and completing a series of short hikes that would expose us to a good sampling of multiple areas in the park.  Since we were not sure if we would ever return to BBNP (no easy way to get here - it is remote), we opted to see as much of the park as possible.  We also decided that today would be a good opportunity to get the truck dirty.  In the end, we drove 163 miles through the park today, 36 of which were off road.

Our first stop was "Grapevine Hills", and required a bumpy 6 miles of dirt to access.  What the hike lacked in difficulty due to minimal elevation gain, it made up for with the deep sand of the wash we climbed to the gravity-defying rock window at trail's end.

Next, we ventured to the southwestern corner of the park to visit Santa Elena canyon. This is the first of 3 major canyons cut by the Rio Grande in BBNP.  The canyon is 7 miles long and its walls rise 1,500 feet above the river. The canyon was beautiful, but the 45 minute drive along Ross Maxwell Road to this site took our breath away.  We heard an interesting story that occurred recently about a young couple at this location.  Where the Rio Grande narrows, you are literally feet away from Mexico.  The couple decided it would be fun to wade across, touch Mexican soil, and return to the USA side.  Big mistake.  The border patrol were watching, arrested the couple, impounded their car and belongings, and took them to jail hours away in Alpine, Texas.  Karen and I were glad to hear this tale of woe before we made the same ill-fated creek crossing ourselves.

Upon leaving Santa Elena, we took a 14 mile dirt and gravel "shortcut" on Old Maverick Road before spending another hour cruising the tarmac to Rio Grande Village at the far eastern end of the park. While we were on the dirt route, we were surprised by a point-of-interest that was not noted in any of the guidebooks Karen had reviewed.  It was the actual house of Gilberto Luna, known as Luna's Jacal (a jacal is the type of structure in the photo below, constructed of mud and stone and ocotillo cactus).  Luna managed to befriend both the Mexican bandits and the Commanches who once frequently raided this area, and farmed the dry lands he owned along the Old Maverick Road until he died in 1947 at age 108.

Our next stop was Rio Grande Village where we bought cold drinks and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.  Just minutes from the village was the Boquillos Canyon.  After some of the other hikes we experienced the past few weeks, we were a little lukewarm on this venue.  However, we did witness an interesting border phenomenon at Boquillas.  There were several "stations" scattered along the trail with simple arts/crafts for sale.  There were decapitated soda bottles at each of these sites requesting various dollar amounts for the purchase of these items.  Seated on a stony sand-bar mid-river was a sun-baked Mexican gentleman observing us with hopeful interest as we passed each of the displays. We elected to heed the multiple warnings we had received from the park rangers to avoid contact with and forego purchasing from these border-wading traveling vendors.

 

The 5 miles to Ernst Tinaja were the most challenging 4-wheeling adventure of the day, requiring us to travel in 4L up some of the steep, washed out and cratered, boulder-strewn ascents.  We were rewarded with a slot canyon hike and  rock scramble that was Cam's favorite of the day.  Tinaja means natural stone waterhole.  The site is important as one of the few year-round sources of water in the Dead Horse Mountains. Eons of flowing water have carved a deep tank in the rock.  We were visiting during a very dry spell, so the water in the tinaja was low, rancid, and odiferous, but the dry conditions made for excellent hiking over the dusty ghosts of waterfalls and under the boulders suspended between their companion rocks.  As we were entering the mouth of this canyon, our hiking companions from yesterday, the 2 Bens, were exiting.  We had a short visit, and they left us their contact information for possibly joining forces in future adventures.

By the time we exited the dirt trail and returned to pavement, we were enjoying the sunset across our dashboard as we drove the hour back to our lodge.  Cam started to itch and discovered that somewhere during the course of the day he must have set his  hat in a bed of CHIGGERS. His neck and face and upper arms erupted in large, red, swollen, purulent welts.  Anybody who has experienced chigger bites knows Cam won't be  getting much good sleep the next few nights.