Along the Rio Grande

a week in Big Bend National Park

This is the second post concerning the trip we took in March and April of this year. After spending time in San Antonio, we drove west to Big Bend National Park and the adjacent Big Bend Ranch State Park in southwest Texas. The two parks stretch along 175 miles of the United States-Mexico border, demarcated here by the course of the Rio Grande.  Big Bend is not much visited as compared to other big national parks.  It is hard to get to, 400 miles of driving from San Antonio, 320 miles from El Paso. And it gets really hot; the brochure says “summer ground temperatures may be 140 degrees at midday.” In most places there is little or no shade. In early March when we visited, the weather was great and the scenery was varied and spectacular. We had a wonderful week.

Big Bend is characterized by the convergence of three distinct ecosystems; the northern part of the Chihuahua Desert; the woodlands of the cooler, wetter Chios Mountains; and the riparian corridor of the Rio Grande.  All sorts of interesting things occur in this area of convergence.  Here are some pictures, starting with the desert:

Most of big Bend National Park consists of Chihuahuan Desert. This is the largest desert in North America, occupying parts of southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and north central Mexico.
There are many miles of unpaved roads in Big Bend National Park. We usually avoided driving on these as the camper van has low ground clearance. The Chios Mountains are on the horizon.
Laura on her bicycle.
Great views on this bike ride, but dusty, steep and with the slippery type of gravel.
Everybody likes roadrunners; they are all over Big Bend.
In the desert areas most of the hiking trails follow washes. They are usually dry except briefly after rains, at which time they can flood very quickly.
The washes are formed by flowing flood waters. Frequently this flowing water will erode into sudden drops called “pour-offs.”
Laura is at the base of the large Burrow Mesa pour-off. The Burrow Mesa wash falls into this chute just below where the sky is at the top of the picture. The guide book says, “In flash floods, the pour-off and canyon can become a raging torrent, so this hike should be avoided in stormy weather.”
A Chihuahuan Desert scene with two ocotillo plants. The Chios Mountains are again in the background.

The Chios Mountains occupy the middle of the national park. Attaining elevations of up to six thousand feet above the surrounding desert they are cooler and receive about twice the rainfall as does the desert. They constitute a “sky-island,” a forest ecosystem with plants and animals not normally found in the desert southwest. Although rarely seen, there are peccaries and bears and mountain lions.

Gaining elevation, we saw unusual combinations of cacti and trees.
An oak forest in the basin of the Chios Mountains.
Craig at about tree line on a mountain hike, with views of Mexico to the south.
Stunted cacti, finding a foothold at high elevation.
Looking north from the Chios Basin over the lower, flatter desert.
Looking down on the Rio Grande from the southern escarpment of the Chios Mountains. Mexico is to the left, Texas to the right.

Big Bend National Park is bordered on the south by 155 miles of the Rio Grande, which is also the United States-Mexico border. There is no border wall here; apparently illegal border crossing and smuggling are just not issues within the park borders. Perhaps this is due to the geographic isolation of the Mexican side of the border. Along that section of the Mexican side of the Rio Grande there is only the one village of Boquillas del Carmen. It has a population of about 200 and is five hours by a bad road from anywhere else of any size in Mexico, perhaps too far for profitable smuggling. Getting out of the national park would also not be easy; there are just two access roads and both of them have Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints on them. We didn’t see any Border Patrol agents in the park itself.

Regarding the Mexican village of Boquillas, its economy is based almost entirely on tourist visits from the national park. There is an official United States port of entry across the river from Boquillas and during its open days people with passports are welcome to cross the river and visit the village for lunch and handicraft shopping. You can wade the river but it is more polite to pay five dollars to take the ferry which supports the village’s economy and also keeps your feet dry. Apparently until recent years the few people who lived in this area paid little attention to the border and the area functioned as a single community and economy, not much concerned with distant state and national governments.

The Rio Grande itself is unfortunately far diminished from its previous state. At this point in its course, so much of its water has been drawn off for irrigation that it is frequently just a foot or two deep. Many stretches are no longer navigable for rafters and canoeists. The banks and floodplains are still verdant however and create a dramatic ribbon of green through the desert landscape.

There is rarely any doubt where the river is! The banks are frequently hemmed in with willow and cottonwood trees.
The Rio Grande flows through four canyons In Big Bend. This is the entrance to Boquillas Canyon. Texas is on the left, Mexico on the right.
Perhaps those two horsemen are illegals coming to steal our jobs and threaten our womenfolk. If so they are going the wrong way, heading back into Mexico. More likely they are the two fisherman visible in the preceding photo, heading back to Boquillas and guiding their horses along the river and banks without much concern for the international boundary.
Speaking of illegal border crossings, here are some tourists behaving badly. If the two people on the Mexican side of the river wish to re-enter the United States legally, they will need to hike many miles over forbidding terrain to a legal point of entry. This is looking east over the Rio Grande to the Chios Mountains.
Law-abiding Laura in contrast, although holding a Mexico-rooted shrub, is not even thinking about illegally crossing this international border. That is the poor Rio Grande, vastly depleted of its waters for human needs.
This is the Rio Grande emerging from the dramatic Santa Elena Canyon. Although the river looks far more substantial here, it may be only inches deep. You can see that the kayaker is stirring up sediment with each paddle stroke; he is probably hitting the bottom.
This is the Rio Grande in Santa Elena Canyon; we hiked up it until the trail ended here. Laura is in Texas, the left bank is Mexico.

There is not much visible human history in Big Bend. Native Americans long inhabited the area but the traces of their presence are faint and not readily accessible to the public. There were some working mineral mines, but those closed by the early 20th century. The few small Mexican and American farming and ranching communities were mostly abandoned by the time the national park was founded in 1933.

This is the main building of the Homer Wilson Blue Creek Ranch. It was the largest ranching operation in Big Bend and was active from 1929 to 1943. It was then turned over to the National Park Service.
I think this is Blue Creek.
This is the cemetery of the village of La Coyota, a settlement of perhaps twenty Mexican American families on the north bank of the Rio Grande. It was settled in 1884 and abandoned by about 1935. The village itself is now completely gone, but somebody is still tending this graveyard.
La Coyota Cemetery
Is this finally a photo of a well preserved Big Bend dwelling? I am afraid not; this is a television set constructed in 1995 for the mini-series “Streets of Laredo.” I think it is unlikely the National Park Service would allow the construction of such a building; they have lots of rules. This is to the west of the national park in the Big Bend Ranch State Park. The scenery is certainly authentic however.

After a wonderful week in Big Bend National Park we left the park driving west on Texas Farm-to-Market Road 170. This must surely be one of the country’s most scenic drives and goes through Big Bend Ranch State Park. Here are some final pictures:

Looking west on Texas FM 170, the Rio Grande is on the left.
Texas FM 170 in Big Bend Ranch State Park
Our camping site in Big Bend Ranch State Park
The Rio Grande.
Looking east from Texas, across the Rio Grande to the Sierra del Carmen Mountains of Mexico.

6 Comments

  1. WOW WOW WOW!!
    have not been there in years…so jealous of you TWO1
    home safe now i hope cause i love you and MISS YOU TWO!

  2. Thanks again for the pictures and explanations.
    They are far better than watching the Travel Channel.
    I hope Laura doesn’t need any women’s health care while in Tx.

  3. Love the pictures and the explanations. So inspiring. We need to get out there and see our own backyard. Maybe this fall when it cools off a little. Thank you for sharing.

  5. What a remarkable eye you have for your surroundings! I’m sharing in an adventure. Thanks

  6. Another great collection of photos and informative background info. You did a great job of capturing the feel of the desert and topography of Great Bend NP. I particularly like seeing the elevational changes in vegetation on your hike into the Chisos mountains.

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