The Chisos Mountains

Day 1
On this very fine Saturday, my friend Pam and I traveled to Big Bend National Park in West West West Texas. We were off to a late start but made it to the park at around 4:30 pm. It was a 7 1/2 hour drive from Austin (yes...Texas is huge!). We went to the Ranger station in Panther Junction and found out that they had plenty of primitive campsites open (upon arriving, we were under the impression that we would be setting up camp in the desert). The first campsite we chose was boulder meadows. Meadows? Hmph! It was actually pretty far up the mountain, but only about 1.5 miles up. However since we were probably carrying around 40-50 lbs on our backs, it felt much further (we were carrying over 2 gallons of water each)! Well, when we got up to our site, we set up our tent and slept on rocks...haha. In the morning our hips were bruised. Still though, I make it sound bad, but I had already fallen in love with Big Bend. Hear more in the next days blip...