Turkey Day in Big Bend

500+ miles from our house to Big Bend!  A 4:30 am start put us there in plenty of time to find our rental......Big Bend Observatory!

A rustic cabin, a star gazing platform, and a fancy telescope inside a building with a retractable roof!  Plus a resident metal eagle! Heading into the National Park in the morning to explore and use my new camera!

Big Bend or Bust today!  Entered the park, and took Old Maverick Road, 12.6 miles of scenic washboard according to my hubby!  But, it offered lots of opportunities for photography.  

We stopped for a picnic lunch at Santa Elena Canyon and shared a table with a couple from Santa Fe, NM. Skipped hiking the canyon because of my shoulder injury and my PT urging me not to fall and completely tear it, but walked along the Rio Grande to take photos!  

Then we were off to Castolon and a cold ice cream treat at the store.  We stopped for some short hikes and explored some old homesteads.  Our final hike was at Lower Burro Mesa Pour-off Trail. Back at our cabin we had dinner on the porch as the sun set behind the horizon!

Very hazy in the park today! Hoping for clearer skies tomorrow!

Still learning with my new camera!  One thing for sure it is much heavier to pack than anything I have ever used!  The learning curve may take a little longer...might even need read the book!  Or maybe just take a bunch of photos...bound to occasionally get a good one!

Thanksgiving Day was spent enjoying the beauty of Big Bend!  Lunch was simple, but delicious....baked ham, sweet potatoes, and corn!   Late in the afternoon we drove into Terlingua and walked the grounds of the old church and cemetery.  

If only the dead could talk, to tell us what life was like many years ago in this rugged, remote part of Texas.  We can’t even conceive how difficult it was. We got back to our cabin just in time to catch a brilliant display at sunset!  Wow it was spectacular!

Back to Big Bend National Park after breakfast and coffee on the porch.  Drove the Grapevine Hills Road to the trail of Balanced Rock.  Hiked part of the trail and took photos, but skipped the last part of the trail that required scrambling over boulders!  Not a great idea with my shoulder! 

Then a quick stop at Dugout Wells and on to Boquillas Canyon Overlook were we ran into folks from Victoria.  Lunch was a picnic at Rio Grande Village, parking under the shade of a big, old Cottonwood tree and opening the tailgate for our picnic.  Heading back we decided to go up into the Basin, but heard there might be traffic delays for road construction, saw the traffic stopped and vetoed that idea. So back to our cabin to grab a nap before sunset and dinner! Didn’t take as many pictures today, but we were on the road driving a bunch!

 

On the road again, we drove from Terlingua to Presidio, then on to the end of the paved road on FM 170 passing thru Indio, Ruidosa, and ending our trek in Candelaria.  Round trip we drove 230 miles!

    Indio were cotton was once king is now only represented by a cemetery high on a hill! 

    Ruidosa was a former penal colony occupied by convicts and now sits abandoned. Nearby lie the adobe ruins of El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús, the Ruidosa community church built in the early 1900s.

    Candelaria was a ranching settlement where time seems to have stood still, and children still play in the street and clothes are hung on the line to dry. Along this same road are hundreds and hundreds of bee hives that a Colorado company uses to winter their bees in a warmer climate! 

    The drive was like a step back in time, reading the epitaphs of long lost souls.  The cemeteries were home to veterans from WWII and Korea, to cowboys and ranch hands, to young children lost to soon and hundreds of unmarked graves of unknown loved ones.

 

Our final day called for one more trip into the park and a drive up into the basin. With most of the crowds gone, and construction halted it was a easy drive.  It was about 50 degrees with a brisk cold wind, but the abundant sunshine helped! 

I tried to get a few more photos before we head home!  Last stop was Terlingua for a photo of the Starlight Cafe, without the masses of folks that hang around in the evening. Up early and headed home in the

Port A to the Rescue!

Spent the last four days in Port Aransas taking photos, using different settings and editing techniques.

Also tried shooting  in black and white more often.  Went to the beach every morning for sunrise...as each one is different!  Walked miles and miles looking for my next photo subject.  Toes in the sand, saltwater on my feet, and sunshine on my face......the sure cure for what ails you!

Stayed at a really cute condo at Pirates Reef called Sparkle Fish. Found a really sweet deal that was hard to resist! Enjoyed my favorite dish at Fins, Gulf Fish Vera Cruz.

McKinney Falls State Park

Spent the day at McKinney Falls State Park near Austin!  Enjoyed hiking and had a picnic for lunch.  On the way home we had to stop for some Black’s BBQ!

 

Winter Wonderland!

Boarded Southwest Airlines for a flight to Denver, then on to Estes Park, Colorado for 10 days of Rocky Mountain weather.  We rented a lovely home in Windcliff Estates, called The Griffin!

We celebrated Dale’s birthday during our stay!

  Our rental was 4 bedrooms, 3 baths with a amazing kitchen and a huge fireplace with huge picture windows and a large outside deck. Little did we realize that a mountain top home meant a hairy, 8 switchback, 2 lane paved road!  After unloading the car we headed to Safeway for groceries for our stay! 

During our stay we hiked Lily Lake, Sprague Lake, Lymph Lake,  Bear Lake, Poudre Lake, and a trail on the tundra!  

Our house backed up to RMNP and we hiked a trail into it, plus we usually walked a mile in the neighborhood......all uphill and downhill. We drove Trail Ridge Road before the smoke from the Cameron Peak fire shut it down.

 The Cameron Peak fire displayed quite a smoke plume up to 35,000 feet as it burned!  We also walked along the river trail in town after lunch one day.

The highlight of our trip was a trip we booked with Backbone Adventures!  We rented a Polaris Razor 4 place for a day of off-roading!

 It was a wild day...up and over boulders or straddling gullies in the Rocky Mountain National Forrest!  Armed with a map and GPS navigation we took on most of the trails!  Dale spotted a huge rock for a perfect picnic lunch spot about Noon. We left that day coated with Rocky Mountain dirt!

The big unexpected surprise of our trip was a snowstorm with 6-8 inches of powder.  Being from South Texas we don’t see snow much!

   Dale was in charge of snow removal!

 I loved going out for a walk with my camera to take some photos of the Winter Wonderland in September. At night the temps were in the 20’s, but made it just above freezing during the day. Concerned about driving back to Denver in a snowstorm, we stayed one extra day.  Lucky for us we were able to stay in our rental, changed our flight and added a day to our rental car.  The drive back went off without a hitch, the roads were clear and traffic wasn’t bad!

RMNP has awesome landscapes, herds of elk, and pristine lakes! 

Of course the altitude was a killer for us Texans!  A hike to Lymph Lake at almost 10,000 feet, just about did us in...but a rest stop with a candy bar and water gave us the energy to continue to Lymph Lake! 

Our rental home was perfect, and the snowstorm, a bonus made it look like a winter wonderland outside!