The great next thing: March 2017 Stillwell Store and Big Bend

Heading to Big Bend National Park today. It was hard saying goodbye to the Texas Staves!

Thanks Rachel for the note and delicious banana bread!!

Decided to go out 10 instead of 90 because we were looking for propane and thought we'd have a better chance of finding it on the bigger road. Propane is so hard to find. We can find all kinds of places that sell replacement canisters but very few places have equipment that will fill an RV tank, and yes there are some RV campgrounds that sell it but not many..... Also Jeff didn't seem to think 90 was going to be very good…we did find propane at a KOA in Kerryville.

There are tons of windmills and oil pumps as we move more and more west.

The scenery has finally changed since we left Florida, from palm tree and palmettos to… It began with small brush oak trees and cactus. The trees are gone and there are now small coarse bushes and bush palms (I'll have to find out their real names). And less cactus 🌵 and none that look like the emoji.… yet…I'm on a quest to find one!

It was 55 and raining when we left San Antonio this morning and is now 83, 129 miles out of Big Bend.
On 385 between Fort Stanton and Marathon they have a bunch of "Dip"s in the road and at the bottom of these dips is a flood gauge. These dips are very similar to roller coasters 😳, and no I'm not driving!!

Just passed the sign "six shooter draw".
Saw Road Runners, beep beep!!
Javelina - Wild boar!!!
and several Rabbits.

Oh my goodness!! Stillwell store isn't at all like the website. I was expecting pretty much desert but it's not only desert but the store is ramshackle and there are 4 RVs on "the strip". The strip has some water and electric hookups and a large area with nothing, not even site markers. There are several metal fire rings and rock rings but not much else. When asked where we should set up she said anywhere you like… now I know why! No ones here. Despite all of that there is a beauty here. Small yellow flowers (desert marigolds) dust the campsites and small bushes (mesquite) dot here and there.

We are surrounded by mountains, some near and some farther… no picture will do this justice.

Jim is the chef tonight so I've been writing. He's making salad, potatoes and boneless pork chops all on the fire, except the salad of course, silly!

There are two big horse trailers in the campsites and several horses in a coral beyond my view. Not a real horse fan but from a far they are beautiful. As it's getting dark I can hear the horses moving around in the coral, sound travels a long way out here, they must be 150 yards away and I can hear the click of their hoofs and their soft nicker...almost sounds like they're right next to us.

Tomorrow we head to Big Bend and try to secure camping for the week. Some say "no problem", some say "no way", we'll see!

Up with the sun to get to permits to camp back country. 50 degrees. Sun hitting the mountain tops 1st and there is a thick fog sitting at the base of the mountains.
In the park we can hardly see anything because the fog is so thick.
The mountains look like they were once all covered in sand and the wind has uncovered some of the tops.

Heading to Rio Grande Visitors Center.....
Have a permit for 7 nights but not starting until tomorrow!!??!!
Jim talked to the visitor center attendant, Jimmy, and he let us know that we just pick up an envelope at the registration board at the campground, drive through the campgrounds and if it's not tagged or the last day is today, fill out an envelope and it's yours! It was that simple, we have a site for one night at the Rio Grande Village ($7/night) and then back country spots ($0/night but a limit of 14 nights), K 2 for one nite then K 1 for the rest of the week (unless we change our minds 😄).
After we secured camping sites, we drove to the trail head-Boquillas (bo-key-us) canyon trail, magnificent!!! 90 degrees. Nothing like 90 in March.

Spent several hours there hiking, staring at the mountains in awe and soaking our feet in the Rio Grande. There are several spots that have beaded trinkets and walking sticks laid out on rocks with a jar for money. One such place had an attendant asking everyone who walked by if they would buy something. There were canoes, horses and donkeys on the Mexico side of the river and their owners.

Found a "cell phone lot" - much different then around airports but we were able to get reservations for a day in a canoe on the Rio Grand!! Left a message for my mom and had lunch while sending several texts… then thought we'd go to the Hot Springs but the road was not good enough to drive all the way with the van and it was getting late so decided we would try and tackle it tomorrow. The plan tomorrow is go get a permit to tube on the river and then walk the 3 miles to the hot springs in the morning, take a dip and then float back to camp. Sooooo excited!!

Once we returned to our campsite we walked along the nature trail, down to the river and then up to the look out. Stunning!!

More trinkets

Not sure what they were doing.....

Hope it was a dedication....

Getting so frustrated......

Tonight we had BBQ chicken, riced veggies and corn!

River Permit secured!

We hiked the Hot Springs trail, 3 miles, 2 1/2 hours, 86 degrees and tubbed back, 1 1/2 hours. The walk out was not bad, a lot of up and up and down. By the time we got there I was hot and not so very interested in getting in the hot spring. We did soak our feet for a few, and I'm sure Jim would have stayed longer. We had packed our tubes for the float down the river... for some reason we didn't really pack a nice medium sized backpack for our trip, so we strapped the tubes onto the outside of our small camera backpack and onto a hiking fanny pack. A bit awkward but it did the trick. Next time! Once we finished soaking our feet we had to blow up the tubes, pack our gear into a water/dry bag (which are not so dry anymore) and relax and float. We did get a few interested looks. Not sure if they couldn't believe we were getting in the water or couldn't believe they hadn't thought of floating down it. There was some concern about how long this might take us to float down but.....not to worry!

Showers were next, $2 for 5 mins. Made it just fine, thank you! Feel great, now some shopping at the little store. Cheese, frozen veggies and some kind of "hot" kielbasa sausage thing.

On to our new camp site, K-Bar 2.
But first.....can't help myself. Have to see everything.....Side trip to Dugout Well, an oasis in the desert! Just keep a look out for cotton wood trees and there you'll find water.

Last night we were in a back country site.....gravel road allllllll theeeee way! Took us 1/2 hour to go the 4 miles. Oh my goodness!! The road is a two track gravel road that goes on forever! Glad we never met another RV, 15 mins down the road and we came to a campsite.....not ours, traveling between 4 and 10 mph!! Still farther for our site.
Amazing, way out here and we get cell service, not able to send emails but can receive them, can call and text, no internet but I wasn't expecting that. We had chili, salad and beer tonight.

Saw a coyote this morning crossed the road in front of us…must mean we're going to have an amazing day.

Up at 6 and out at 6:20 to meet up with a group to do some canoeing. Got to the rendezvous about 45 minutes early, so glad we weren't late. Never know distances and times when in the mountains and on small windy roads.
Had time to have breakfast and coffee and pack what we might need.

Signed our life away and got life jackets and paddles/canoe and we were off. There were 11 canoes in our group, quite large. Three guides, each in their own canoe. The outfitter was, Far Flung Outdoor Center, highly recommend! Wasn't sure what this was going to turn out to be but we had a tremendous guide, 2 great support guides and a great time! We went up the Santa Elena canyon. Not my favorite thing, going upstream, but the views were incredible even though we had to walk a handful of times because of low water.