A Birthday In Big Bend

Before leaving Seminole Canyon, we took a guided tour to view to the 4,000 year old pictographs and to learn a little about the life of the earliest hunter/gatherers in the area. The girls have both been practising their spear-throwing ever since – you never know when it may come in handy!

In the afternoon, on yet another glorious sunny day, we drove across the increasingly mountainous Chihuahuan Desert alongside the transcontinental railway to Marathon, our staging-post for the Big Bend National Park. We camped in a great little RV park by the tracks and can confirm that Amtrack has frequent overnight schedules! Awoken by the 7am express, we sought out a bakery and found a cafe that sold us a whole pumpkin cake, and two chocolate bars (improvised icing) for Liberty’s 5th birthday.

The Big Bend National Park was a fantastic mix of desert, mountain, river and abundant wildlife. We spent 5 days hiking the trails and testing the girls’ endurance. They held up well overall, but today they begged to go on a long drive so that they could just sit and watch a movie.

Liberty spent her birthday attending a ranger-led walk/talk about mountain lions, complete with horror stories such as “this is the spot where the 5 year old child was pounced upon...” all to be re-enacted, ad infinitum, taking turns to be the lion – this is where that spear-throwing practise comes in.

After a lunchtime cake ceremony we took a longer walk where Liberty’s biggest treat was to see 3 Mexican black bears, one much too close for comfort – just 10 yds away – too close even for Tony to take photos. We were glad to note that Liberty had been listening to the talk in the morning as she advised us not to bend down or we would look like a deer and it might pounce! Right attitude, wrong animal, but we weren’t taking any chances just the same. As it turned out we left without Big Bend without major incident, although there was the tragic loss of Francesca’s soft toy...

Today we are in Alpine having seen a little more of the real Texas, including delicious breakfast burritos, ghost towns and the local attire of cowboy hats and pocketed handguns.