Texas has a feral hog problem. Driving at night on Texas 130 east of Austin, where the speed limit is 85 mph – the highest posted limit in the Western Hemisphere, according to Wiki – car-hits-hog is no idle scenario. Busted hog, busted machine. So I drove with care when I spotted what I took to be wild hogs on the remote main road into Big Bend National Park.
Took me a minute to work out that they weren’t quite pigs, though clearly evolutionary cousins: javelinas. Also known as peccaries. One of the many creatures living in the desert reaches of Big Bend.
We’d come on February 17 for Yuriko’s first visit to the park, but not mine. Not an issue, since no two visits are ever alike in such an epic desert. First stop, a trail near the visitor center, for a closeup look at some flora, and signs describing them.
Next in my series of national park fire hydrants.
Just where is that water pressure coming from?
We drove where it was possible to drive in the park, such as Chisos Basin, and did some walking where it was possible to walk. But not long walks, since temps were touching 90 F.
Toward the east end of the park is a spot off the road labeled “Rio Grande View” on the map.
Good view, including some of the Sierra del Carmen, but you have to squint to see the Rio Grande. There it is, I said, spotting a narrow ribbon of greenery off in the distance that might have been the river. Yuriko wasn’t sure she could see it.
A few miles further east, the riverine border is very much visible from a bluff atop the U.S. side, the Boquillas Canyon Overlook.
We’d come to the eastern part of the park for the Hot Spring — the ruins of a bathhouse, these days — but flooding last year made the unpaved road leading that way impassable to vehicles. It was possible to walk there two miles or so along the ruined road, treating it as a track, but we opted out of that, taking the formula Heat + Age + Long Walks = Trouble seriously.
No matter, we backtracked and went to the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a road I’d thoroughly enjoyed in 2018, and I did again.
An overlook on that road shows you how little territory a road actually occupies. A ribbon crossing a vast expanse.
My own favorite part of the park: Santa Elena Canyon.
The high bluffs are in Mexico, on the other side of the Rio Grande. ‘
I hate to even mention it, but build a wall through the park? Idiots.