Before departing the Big Bend area, we took a drive through the nearby state park. Our earlier visits to the national park produced a lot of photos. The national park will be covered in a future blog post. Like the national park, the state park is vast, covering hundreds of thousands of acres of mountains and desert. LIkewise most of the roads in the park are gravel. One of the few paved roads is a 60 mile stretch which transits the southern edge along the Rio Grand River. This road has been termed by National Geographic as one of the most beautiful roads in the country. There are a lot of other picturesque drives in the country. However, the views did not disappoint.
We traveled westbound toward the border town of Presidio. At the first overlook we stopped at (Upper Madera Canyon), we found this lovely no services campground. In the distance you can see some teepees which turned out to be a picnic area. If you have a self-contained RV, the site and the view can't be beat at $8/day. The fellow in the class-c was set up on probably the best campsite. Our campsite at Terlingua was full hookup, but a dust bowl by comparison.
About half way to Presidio, we stopped at this gorgeous mountain pass. The photos cannot do it justice.
The photo below is the view to the west of the Colorado Canyon
Note that the Rio Grand river on the valley floor is the US border with Mexico. Ina climbed atop a large rock for her "king of the world" moment.
While stopped we noticed these mountain goats.
Again, a photo does not show the scale of the scene. The goats shown by the arrow above was imaged at the 200mm zoom lens' maximum magnification. Below is a blow-up of the above.
Below is an unmagnified picture of the same mountain slope.
The town of Presidio has this rather elaborate welcome sign for a town of 5000 population.
At Presidio we stopped to buy some groceries at the largest store in town making the day into a 120 mile round trip grocery shopping trip.
On the return leg, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Fort Leaton State Historic Site. We did not tour the interior of the reconstructed fort.
Here is the east view from the Colorado canyon pass.
Another tourist told me that the pass was in at least one scene from the Kevin Costner movie, Fandango.
On Monday, March 10, we struck camp and headed north for a short drive to Fort Davis, Texas.
very cool looking place- wonder if they offer horseback riding tours?
ReplyDelete