Finishing up with Big Bend

Sunday did turn out to be a football day, but we really needed it because Monday we took our most ambitious hike of all.  The Lost Mine Trail starts from the highest elevation the Chisos Basin road gets to, around 5,700 feet, and climbs 1,100 feet in two and a half miles to the top of a ridge where there are magnificent views of the basin and the surrounding desert.

  

The trail has nature markers and a booklet describing things to provide reasons to stop every few minutes, but it is still up every step of the way.  Thank goodness we had worked our way up to this one, and thank goodness we had rested the previous day.  It was a good hike and we spotted a white tailed deer in the trail on the way down.

 

Tuesday we recovered from the previous day's hike with just a short hike on the nature trail that starts in the campground.  Unfortunately the start of the trail was washed out in the floods last year so we had to hike a circuitous route around the beaver pond instead of taking the boardwalk over it.  The trail climbed a small hill near the river that had nice views.  That evening we gave ourselves a treat.  We rode up to the Basin Lodge and had dinner at their restaurant.  The food was OK, not great, but the views were worth it.

Wednesday we took our leave of Big Bend, having given it a pretty good look over for almost two weeks.  We feel like we know it pretty well.  We drove to Pecos, TX were we stayed in an RV park so we could do laundry.

Thursday we traveled east on I-20 to Midland, TX where I spent a couple hours touring the  Permian Basin Petroleum Museum.  I found it interesting but Dianna stayed in the truck and read.  Afterwards we motored north to a small county park north of Andrews, TX for the night.  Today we will move further east somewhere, and probably spend a couple days getting to Denton where we plan to spend the holidays with Dayna and her family.