Big Bend Ranch State Park - 12 February 2018

After looking back over my blog for this year, I realized I never finished posting about my travels from February.  Because I like having them recorded on my blog as a way of looking back over where I've been and what I've done, I'd like to go back and post about some of the other beautiful places I've been this year before I start posting about my trip to Europe!  Bear with me as there will be a number of posts published over the next few days!  

When we left New Mexico, we knew we had not had as much time in Guadalupe National Park as we would have liked, so when we left Big Bend NP, we headed back.  We chose to head west through Big Bend Ranch State Park.  The road west out of Terlingua offered no clues to the beauty we would see on the road ahead!  

So gorgeous with the Rio Grand on our left nearly the entire way with the mountains and bluffs on the Mexico side of the river framing it..  Then more mountains and bluffs on the US side.  

All along the river it was an oasis of lush grass and trees, and in many places, livestock grazing along the river.  

This location had been used as a movie set for over half a dozen movies.  Truly a beautiful spot. 

In some places the water is olive green but reflects the blue of the sky.  I loved the intense colors of the ochre yellow grasses, black sand, green trees, and green grass that we saw along the river. 

In other places, the river reflected the most intense blue, probably due to the clear blue sky we had! 

Since we were there in February, we didn't get to see the lush grass in shades of green, but the golden ochre hues were lovely too! 

There was a short, but steep canyon gap/ pass with a 15% road grade either side.  Going up in the RV was just fine.  Pausing to take photos was a bit nerve wracking as it seemed that the brakes would surely not hold on such a steep grade!  Thankfully, there were no issues!  

The river was a lovely ribbon of blue green through the valley.


Interesting rock formations formed in the softer rock.


The olive green of the water echoed the green of the prickly pear cactus.


The Rio Grande forms an international border: Mexico on the left, the US on the right.

At one stop along the river I found this bit of wind sculpted sand.  After walking around the area for a while, I came back to the same spot before leaving and already it had blown nearly completely away! A landscape evolving literally before our eyes.  

Truly a beautiful area.  

Further down the road, another area of interesting rock formations.  This time in red sandstone.  Bitter cold wind here, so we did not stay long, though I did find a sheltered spot to do a water color of this scene from.  

After a brief stop in the small town of Prosidio, we headed north across the broad grassy expanses towards New Mexico.  This was what I had expected most of Western Texas to be like!  

Our lovely day came to end as we arrived in New Mexico to views of the Guadalupe Mountains.  We went back to our least favorite campground of the trip at White's City RV, mostly because we needed electric hookups in order to stay warm.  We were sitting in the RV downloading photos when the lights began to flicker, then a sound like a gunshot and everything went dark!  At first I thought that the furnace had blown, but then we realized others were also having issues.  Apparently a transformer in the RV park had blown.  I unplugged the RV and turned everything off, put extra blankets on the bed, and added long johns and wool socks to my nighttime wardrobe.  It was cold with an expected low of 26 degrees F!  The kitties slept under the covers with me and we were snug and warm in our little nest.  It was chilly getting up, a cold 22 degrees F, but we tried plugging in again, and much to our relief, the electricity was back on and everything warmed up nicely!  The crazy thing was, it never even occurred to me that I had a generator in the RV that I could have turned on so that we could have had heat and lights all night!