Photos of Big Bend Texas and the Rio Grande

 

 Santa Elaña Canyon

On the left is Mexico and on the right is the USA. We ended up hiking on a trail to the right that was tucked I the cliffs. And amazing hike be any standards. We saw some shell fossils that were about 40 million years old. The cautionary tale is that one MUST walk in the cold water to get to the trail head.

Cool grasses found along the Rio Grande

The Rio Grande. The water is really very low and depends upon local springs to fill it. Most of the actual Rio Grande is emptied out in El Paso. My heart was heavy the whole time for the flora and fauna that depended on this water for a million years or more and now face extinction. I know that weather patterns change but humans add to the desertification by irrigating crops and controlling water supply.  I'm not mad so much as sad. Even knowing what we know to day, it is hard to change our ways. Perhaps future generation will figure out ways to return water to these fragile riparian eco systems. 

The beautiful Rio. 

View from an out house.

Me and my beloved Alex at the Terlingua Ghost Town. We only stopped for a short while.  

This ghost town has an active grave site for some young ones who died in 2014. 

Closed Canyon hike. It went all the way down to the Rio Grande but we could only get there part way due to the huge boulders. Someone younger and more spry could have handled it. Either way it was a great hike. You could see in the smooth boulders how historic floods wash them smooth.