Star party, desert diving, cave tours and half a million bats

Aloha all,

for our last day in Big Bend National Park, I was tempted to float down the Rio Grande on an inflatable swim ring. I had expected this to be illegal. With all the media coverage about the border lately, we don’t think of the Rio Grande as a play ground. To my surprise, the border agent and park rangers were almost encouraging this idea, even though I did not see anybody actually doing it. When I ‘tested the waters’, I quickly found out why: Sandra had already decided not to do this because the water was at the opposite spectrum of clarity from the crystal clear Frio River we floated down at the Garner State Park. I changed my mind when I was almost knee deep in mud before getting to the actual water. So I chickened out and will never know whether I missed out on a really unique international float trip or whether I avoided getting stuck in the mud somewhere between the US and Mexico. Sometimes it’s disappointing how responsible I can be.

But the alternative, a great hike along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, actually turned out to be a really fun little adventure, too. However, the highlight of that day came surprisingly in the evening on the campground, even though it appeared to be one of the most boring, most desolate RV parks we have ever stayed at. But Mother Nature put on a show for us that night: A sunset in one direction, a rainbow in the other, the darkest clouds I have ever seen and thunder and lightning all the way around us. I counted an average of 30 flashes per minute and it went on for over an hour! What made it very surreal was the fact that even though the thunderstorm seemed to be pretty much surrounding us, we were able to BBQ outside and barely got a drop of rain…

Evening show at the campground: sunset, rainbows, lightning and the darkest clouds I have ever seen.

Just one of the hundreds of lightning flashes that night.

A “lively ghost town” seems like an oxymoron, but that’s what the town of Terlingua is. Part abandoned ghost town, part thriving tourist trap and part gathering of eccentric artists. The cemetery was full of gravesites that made it pretty obvious that some of the residents would have a story to tell, if they weren’t six feet underground. But even the living creatures above ground can be pretty colorful:

One of the colorful residents of the Terlingua ghost town

We drove the very scenic highway 170 along the Rio Grande to Fort Leaton. Most forts we have been to have similar stories; telling the history of westward expansion, trading and fighting with the native tribes and eventually cheating them out of their homelands. This fort is very different, not only because it’s built of adobe. 

Fort Leaton

Since this fort is practically on the Mexican border, the history is a little more complex. We got a little bit into the history before we realized that this is a trap: The whole reason we enjoy American history is because on a layman’s level, you can keep it pretty straightforward, as long as you simply ignore anything that happened before white people showed up. But when they started mentioning the Mexican revolution as if we should have heard about it before, we decided to ignore any history south of the border for now. Just trying to keep it simple before it becomes a confusing mess in my head, like European history. Plus, we are easily distracted if we see an interesting critter:

The fort's 'greeter by the main door

We spent that night at the “Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Area”. In case you have not heard about these lights, I will try to explain why nobody can explain what they are: Depending on who you ask, they are either: A hoax by the local visitor bureau, a fata morgana reflecting lights from nearby oil fields or car headlights, a sign of alien life, or some other unexplained phenomenon. Whatever it is, it attracts enough curious visitors that they built a big parking lot and viewing area along highway 67 in the middle of nowhere. The only lights we saw when we got there were the flashes from the thunderstorms, which have been almost a nightly occurrence this past week. The clouds and the rain were so heavy that we were the only ones at the viewing area, even though we had been warned how busy this place can get around sunset. But one of our favorite things about Texas is that they let you stay overnight in an RV at almost any highway rest area, including this one. So we drank wine and played cards until the sky cleared. And indeed, just before midnight, there were some very obvious lights just above the horizon to the southwest. 

My first instinct was that those must be car headlights and could not possibly be the mystery lights we were looking for. However, some things don’t add up: 1. There is no road where we saw those lights, at least close enough to see the lights as bright as they appeared. 2. If they were headlights, why did they seem to move in random directions, even though all the roads in the area are straight? 3. Why did we see only headlights, was nobody driving in the other direction? 4. Why did I see the most lights in the middle of the night, when I got up to pee? Maybe I am just sympathetic to the Marfa Mystery Lights because they let us camp for free for the night, but mark me down as a believer. I am just not sure what I believe.

The next three days we spent in and around Fort Davis. The actual fort, for which the town is named, was named after Jefferson Davis before he became the president of the confederacy. It is one of the better preserved forts, also because it is managed by our beloved National Park Service. The location under rocky bluffs is very scenic, but it became obsolete and was abandoned quite a while ago. The other main attraction of Fort Davis is the McDonald Observatory. It might be the leading observatory that is open to the public. We joined a daytime program with solar viewing and a tour of the facilities as well as an evening ‘star party’. One of my favorite programs was a presentation about “Spectroscopy”, which they added only to stall for time until the skies cleared for the actual star gazing. 

McDonald Observatory 

I always wondered how astronomers can tell so much about a star that is thousands or even millions of lightyears away. A very simply demonstration made that pretty clear: We all got a little piece of plexiglas with tiny lines etched into it. Looking at a normal light through it revealed a spectrum of the whole rainbow of colors. Looking at a light reflected through various elements like hydrogen, helium or mercury resulted in very distinct patterns. So by analyzing the pattern of light reflected by a far away star, it’s relatively easy to determine what that star is made of. I find almost everything I hear at star parties or planetarium shows is tremendously fascinating but I forget 99% of it almost instantly. The tours and presentation at the McDonald Observatory were so well done and so memorable, I might only forget 98%. 

I am somewhat curious about space travel and I heard that NASA just announced that for a mere 52 million dollars, they’ll take ‘tourists’ to the International Space Station soon. But I might be a little too old, a little to prone to motion sickness and a lot too poor to ever go into space. But the closest thing I can think of is scuba diving: After all: As a diver, you are also pretty much weightless in a totally different world. We always enjoy diving in Hawaii, but by now we are at least somewhat familiar with the underwater world surrounding Maui. So when we heard that there is a fresh water spring in the middle of the desert in West Texas, we were determined to check it out. The San Solomon Spring at the Balmorhea State Park sounded almost ideal for diving: 25 feet deep, very clear visibility, always around 74 degrees warm water and right next to it is a funky little dive shop called “The Funky Little Dive Shop”. 

One giant step for Sandra...

Now, I will admit, when we got to Balmorhea and saw the spring, we thought that this dive was mostly for the novelty for us to dive in fresh water; it pretty much looked like a very big swimming pool. But one giant step into the water and we were intrigued: Crystal clear blue water, bright green algae and hundreds of little friendly fish. The “Mexican Tetras” are such friendly fish that they seem to follow and surround us for most of the dive. There are only about a handful of different kind of fish in this spring, but since every one of them was new to us, it was a very enjoyable dive…in the middle of the desert, who would have thought! The catfish looked like mini sharks and the crayfish like mini lobster. It all felt a little bit like diving in an aquarium. There are also soft shell fresh water turtles that look very different from our green sea turtles in Hawaii. 

Soft shell fresh water turtle at San Solomon Springs

Catfish (or mini shark in my imagination)

Some of the friendliest fish I ever saw

We enjoyed the dive so much (and had plenty of air left in our tanks) that we did a second dive in the afternoon. The underwater routes you can dive are somewhat limited: Enter on one side, dive to the deepest spot, which is at only about 25 feet, where the fresh spring water comes bubbling up through the sand and dive back to where you started. But the novelty of it all did not wear off. On the first dive we had the whole bottom half of the pool to ourselves, on the second dive we saw other bubble blowing humans who were nice enough to snap a pictures of us after seeing us struggling to take an underwater selfie.

We loved our dive in the desert!

Next we went to Pecos. This is the perfect town to go to if you feel overwhelmed by the beauty of Texas. I am not sure I have ever seen a less attractive town. There is no scenery to be seen, and the downtown area (if you can call it that) seems desolate and mostly abandoned, even though this town is booming like crazy. I have never seen another place that seems to be booming and dying at the same time. There are oil fields all around Pecos, even in town you see the flares burning off extra gas everywhere. The abundance of high paying jobs attracts a lot of workers, even McDonald’s pays $16/hour here. Housing for all the oil workers seems to be a real problem. But instead of renovating the abandoned houses in town, they just add RV parks, mobil home parks and container communities all over the place. I guess that’s faster and cheaper and nobody seems to expect this boom to last very long. There is a Walmart in Pecos but it’s tiny, overcrowded and outdated. If they expected this boom to last, they’d build a ‘real’ Walmart here. We had a hard time even finding a store that sells fresh fruits or vegetables, which is ironic since Pecos prides itself to be the original home of Cantaloupe melons. But it’s still Texas, so even in a desolate place like this, you can get an amazingly delicious Texas BBQ. We start to understand why Bunt misses Texas BBQ so much on Maui. 

The only other enjoyable place besides the BBQ we found in Pecos was the local history museum. It’s housed in the old saloon and hotel and each hotel room features a different aspect of the boom and bust history of Pecos. Probably their number one claim to fame is that they held the very first rodeo ever. If you ever wanted to go to a rodeo without hearing anybody bragging how “this ain’t my first rodeo”, you should have been in Pecos in 1883. Of course, just like there are at least three ‘largest balls of twine’, there are also three places claiming to have staged the first rodeo. Pecos wins the category for the first rodeo where prize money was awarded.

The most flattering picture I could take of desolate, booming Pecos, TX

We love the National Park Service and we always enjoy visiting caves, enough reason to head over the New Mexico state line to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park. “Wow!” That is probably all I should say, since it’s hard to describe how amazing the Carlsbad Caverns are…

…but you know I can’t help myself, so I will try to describe them anyway: They are big, but not the biggest. They are old, but not the oldest. They are deep, but not the deepest. So they humbly settle with being ’the most beautiful’ cave in the world. The awe inspiring “Big Room” can be visited on a self guided tour. Even though these caves are obviously very popular, they are so big that it did not get very crowded. We also joined a ranger guided tour to a more secluded area. There is an endless variety of formations and depending on your preference you can learn about the science of their creation, find funny shapes or just enjoy the beauty of it all.

Carlsbad Caverns NP - image two miles of this...

This is a ‘show cave’, meaning it was made very accessible for visitation. If you don’t want to walk down the (very impressive) one mile long natural entrance, elevators take you down (and up) 750 feet to the prettiest part. Areas that used to be untouched for millions of years and then took hours of spelunking to get to can now be visited in a wheelchair and they even have flush toilets and a lunch room down there. Some people argue that they destroyed the cave by making it so accessible. Obviously, they had to blast rocks and destroy formations to build the elevators and walkways and to install the lighting system. But I have to admit: There is no way we would ever get to see this if the cave were still in it’s natural state. And not all is lost: I feel the National Park Service does a very good job protecting the cave for future generations. There’s also another cave in the Guadalupe Mountains that is at least 140 miles long and only accessible to scientists and to serious and responsible cavers. Apparently, they are finding bacteria in these caves that they hope will help cure cancer one day. So I am glad that Carlsbad Cavern was made so accessible and I am glad that other caves are not.

I guess we are not the only ones who found their favorite cave here.

The Carlsbad Caverns are popular not just with the humans, but also with bats. Up to a million bats spend their summer days in one of the caves near the natural entrance. And their nightly flight out of the cave around sunset is so predictable that they built an amphitheater and schedule a ranger program every night during the summer. And sure enough, after about half an hour, the bats started to stream out of the cave. This is quite a sight! Even the experts have a hard time counting, but we estimate at least a hundred bats per second, so over hour or so before it got too dark we must have seen several hundred thousands of bats going out for their nighttime hunt. No wonder we haven’t had a big problems with mosquitoes here. They don’t allow any phones or cameras during the bat flight: Possibly to not disturb the bats, but maybe also to get 500 people to enjoy nature rather than staring at their little screens. I actually appreciated that, the pictures would not have done this spectacle justice anyway.

I have one more way to convey how much we enjoyed the Carlsbad Caverns NP: We loved it so much that the next day, we decided to do pretty much the same thing one more time: We took the elevator down to the Big Room, this time with an audio guide. We took twice as long going around the second time and hiked out the natural entrance again. With so many things we still want to see and do, it really means something, if we decide to do the same thing two days in a row.  

Now we are in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, just a few miles from Carlsbad, but back in Texas. We already did one very nice hike to “Devils Hall”. Tomorrow we are attempting to climb Guadalupe Peak, with 8751 feet the tallest mountain in Texas. With 3000 feet elevation gain, that’s quite a challenge for us, but since we are not getting any younger, we might as well do it now, while we still can. And don’t feel sorry for Sandra, I did not push her to do this hike, she was the instigator. But you’ll have to wait until the next update to see whether she gets all the credit or all the blame.

Aloha & Howdy from Texas,

Chris & Sandra