Big Bend National Park

Hey there!
Enough people are writing "where are you?" messages that I thought I'd better update you. Actually I've been dying to sit down and blog, but there are two reasons that I haven't:

1) I've been too busy absorbing (and photographing) scenic splendor!
2) In the entire Big Bend area (far west Texas), there IS no internet access!

So here I am! From Van Horne, we drove on down to Presidio and stayed the night near Terlingua, just up the road from the Study Butte Landfill. I am thinking that I remember that Study Butte was on the Superfund Cleanup list, so Maddy and I walked the road to the now closed landfill. I can't find it on the EPA list, but that doesn't mean that my memory is faulty.

Big Bend was awesome. We drove there via Big Bend Ranch State Park, which afforded us amazing views of its own. Arriving in the park early, we drove down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. This is scenic splendor at its finest. We stopped at every pullout and just soaked it up. Here are some shots:




They call these Mule Ears... and it's easy to see why!


The non-working windmill at the Sam Nail Ranch:



These panoramas ... how fine PS CS3 is at panoramas! I think better than CS2 was. As with all my photos, I really hope you'll click these, so you see them a little bigger.




We drove all the way to Santa Elena Canyon and we both did the hike into the canyon!


When we began to feel the overload of scenic wonders, we headed off to the full-hookup campground at Rio Grande Village. Sure.. it's just a parking lot, but we did appreciate the A/C on these very warm afternoons/evenings!

I just love photographing flowers, and I love the extreme colors of the desert plants:




More pics later!