Santa Elena Canyon, Castolon and More!

As Kathy says, "Hi, Blog!"

We get TWO blog entries today.  This blog entry, the first, is all about the west side of Big Bend National Park.  The second will be about our introduction to Terlingua Ghostown.

We heard that Santa Elena Canyon, on the Rio Grande, is spectacular, and we weren't steered wrong.  We drove the 40 or so miles to the canyon early this morning, to try to get as much hiking in as we could before the sun got too high and hot.  Here is a photo of Santa Elena Canyon, looking in from where Terlingua Creek enters the river:

The river was even narrower and shallower here than the other day, and David was even more tempted to cross.  Here he is, caught in the act of almost crossing the river.  His excitement about that cooled down when he found out that crossing the river without permission can bring a $5,000 fine or 1 year in prison.  Oh well.

To hike into Santa Elena Canyon, first you have to climb up along the cliff face, then back down to the river beach within the canyon.  Here's a view, from up on the canyon wall, of the Rio Grande as it flows eastward out of Santa Elena Canyon:

Having gotten into the canyon, we nosed around.  Kathy got too nosy and almost got eaten by this stony shark!

Once in the canyon, we could walk about a quarter mile along the beach.  From the beach, the canyon walls loomed large.  Both sides of the river were covered in muddy footprints.  Okay, we get it, the U.S. side had footprints from tourists.  But whose footprints were on the Mexican side???  We didn't see a soul on the other side.  U.S. tourists who crossed over surreptitiously?  Mexicans who crossed into the U.S. illegally there?

After exploring the canyon, we drove back to the Castolon Visitor Center.  Castolon was, essentially, the center of development on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend area.  The earliest settlers were Mexican, but once the Anglos saw that Mexicans were scraping together a living farming along the river, a number of Yanquis tried their hand at it.  Land along the river at Castolon was used for growing cotton as well as a variety of fruits and vegetables.  Here is the Alvino house, the oldest intact structure in Big Bend National Park, an adobe house built in 1901 by Cipriano Hernandez, one of the Mexican settlers of Castolon:

A later settler of Castolon installed a steam engine to pump river water up to irrigate the cotton fields.  Here, Kathy is conducting a VERY CLOSE inspection of the steam engine:

Driving back from Castolon, we stopped at Tuff Canyon.  Tuff is a very hard, smooth, grey rock compressed from volcanic ash that has fallen from eruptions.  A whole canyon was carved in the Big Bend basin through tuff and volcanic rock strata:

What trip into the eastern part of Big Bend National Park would be complete without a visit to Mule Ears, a huge volcanic formation visible from as far away as Terlingua, where we are staying in our campground:

As the late afternoon was hot, we hurried home to shower and drive to Terlingua Ghostown for beers on the Terlingua Porch with our RV neighbors from San Antonio.