"I feel like a mountain goat!"

Hello all :) Amanda told you about our first day adventures to and during Big Bend. Well let's continue on with the rest of our fabulous trip there. Our first night was unbelievably crazy, constant wind the entire night. I thought the tent was gonna flop over with us in it. Needless to say, I did not sleep very much that night. However the night came and went and soon enough it was morning and time to start the rest of the day.

We began with driving to Santa Elena Canyon Trail. Since I am a wonderful navigator it took about an hour and half to get there. Regardless, we started hiking through the canyon itself. We reached the end which was almost a rock quarry right on the "beach" of the Rio Grande. This side of the river did not have any Mexicans trying to come over. Amanda learned how to use the self timer setting on my camera up there as well :) It was beautiful!

As we left, we just decided to stop at the Mule Ears Overlook. As we were there, Amanda felt it necessary to go on another hike, this time through the desert itself. We started hiking towards the Mule Ears Spring. About 40 minutes later, we both came to the conclusion that we had to have passed the turn off to the spring. Great, so we now how another 40 minutes to hike back to the car! It did help that the scenery was amazing.

Back at the campsite, we decided to make dinner and then take showers, woooo! Big Bend National Park likes to charge for everything they can and that includes 5 minutes of shower time at $1.50. You basically are trying to do 2 or 3 things at a time so you don't end up soapy at the end of the 5 minutes so you don't have to spend another $1.50. I knew that if I didn't finish I would have no way of reaching Amanda because I didn't have my phone (not that it would help because I didn't have service in the park) and she didn't feel like waiting in the bathroom, she went to the car. Thus leaving me alone with a group of middle school girls, one being in the other shower saying she was going to come out naked because no one else was here (even though we started our showers at the same time). Slightly annoyed I had to inform them that I was there and that I didn't want her to come out naked!

Finally clean, we drove up to Chisos Basin to see the sunset through the Window view, a popular place to watch it from. We basically got there just in time. Amanda was more excited about the soda and ice cream in the store than the actual sunset. Afterwards on our 40 minute drive back to the campsite we saw a group of Javelinas (pig like animals)!! Amanda was so happy to see some wildlife other than birds and roadrunners. A great ending to a great day!

After a very cold night, we packed up and headed to Guadalupe National Park. We ended up passing another border control station (both stations being about 80 or 90 miles from the border), who were much nicer than the last station. He did ask if we saw anybody hiking on the road, like really we were going to say yes and have to be interrogated longer??!! We finally got to the national park and got out of the car. Gusts of wind at around 50 mph! I've never in my life had to push through a wind and I felt like I was seriously working out sometimes. After some serious consideration we decided to just pass through and head to Carlsbad National Park. We got there just in time to tour the Big Room of the caverns. They were dark, creepy and wet....I loved them! Tomorrow will be a continuation of more caverns and more cave walks and dealing with more rude hotel clerks.

Until then....bye folks.

Nadeen

PS

The title came from me. Lately I have been speaking without thinking and we were in Santa Elena, climbing down the path. My stupid self just absent-mindedly said I felt like a mountain goat because of all the rocks that overlook the cliffs and the river. I meant to say mountain lion but didn't say it and Amanda wouldn't let it go. Thus the title of my blog!