Wildhorse Station Alpine

... wobble Michelle was still a<br>little unsure whether she would actually make it without completely<br>going in. Having to shout to Dean to drag her to safety, Michelle was<br>safe. Jonathan then shouted, 'finally your across, now just to get<br>you back!' We spent a few minutes in Mexico... illegally before<br>heading back to America, now also entering illegally.<br><br>Back was just as bad, Dean went across<br>to get some snaps of Michelle as she ...

... all sorts of crazy odds and ends. The local community was also much more colorful than what we had experienced in the rest of Texas. For instance, there were many T-shirts and other souvenirs for sale that said "Keep Austin Weird" or &#8220;A little Blue in a sea of Red&#8221;. We fit right in and if either of us had to move to Texas, this would be the city for us. Each evening we met up with Mark to have ...

... border was a first for me. National land borders are a strange concept for a citizen of a country as geographically immense as the United States, and when one comes upon them, it's a bit of a shock, as if access to the seemingly endless and open landscape, will never end, be questioned, or denied. We were actually stopped by border patrol two or three times coming and going into Big Bend, and I found it a bit intimidating. A wake-up call to the privileged mobility we enjoy.

... hole called a Tinaja. The rocks in the area are fantastic, with layers upon layers of multicolored strata and crazy swirling shapes. I tried to capture a few, but Hao and Steve would have a field day out here! Next came some time in the West side of the park in the St. Elena Canyon area. This is similar to the Bouquillas Canyon but this is where the river enters the park. The whole park used to be ranch lands and ...

... Calgary was since he used to go to the rodeos up there but none of them heard of Edmonton. Art, the old-timer and town historian, sidled up to June. Apparently he walks into the bar at 5:30 every day wearing cowboy hat. Today, he showed up wearing a ball cap and the other regulars didn't recognize him! When they asked him why, he replied, "I can lock on a ball cap but my cowboy hat wouldn't have lasted two seconds in this wind!" Anyways, he kept us amused with stories ...

... But you could still get onto some of the trails and once we had driven high up into the mountains we walked to the lookout to enjoy the spectacular views. Sadly, not only were the bears presenting themselves to be a bit of an obstacle, we had also arrived at a time when the Rio Grande was at a serious flood stage. This meant that we could not go out on a leisurely canoo trip to admire the gorge - if we wanted to go onto the river, we would have to go on quite a ...

So, as we mentioned in the last entry, Big Bend has been experiencing the worst flooding in memory, with water over 20 feet higher than normal. Of course, with flows like this, we had to get on the water to see it for ourselves. So we signed up for a rafting trip to get an up close experience of the water. Our trip ended up being through Santa Elena canyon, a beautiful section of the river with ...

... the Rio Grande was not its usual placid self. It was a record 20 feet higher than normal (running at 30,000 cubic feet per second), with floods almost a mile wide and all of the riverside campgrounds flooded out. We popped into a river outfitter to get some advice, since we knew already that canoeing was out of the question, and decided to head out for a raft trip as soon as a local company would take us out. As it turned out, we weren't able to ...

... places in the west that I might want to visit. He was in New Zealand, just got back, and sent me an email with some suggestions. Now I have to figure out how to fit those places into my Journey. The Grand Canyon was already in my plans but he's narrowed down which part of it to see. That was a question that I hadn't figured out yet. Now back to my potential diamonds. Now theoretically, if I had found a diamond in this canyon, I wouldn't leave it there. But this ...

Big Bend, TX 2430 miles, no change I was so enthralled with this concept of a National Park I decided to stay another day. Apparently it's a giant landscape where you can do anything you want and are free to explore. Today I did some more searching for high ...