Our second day at Kickapoo was quiet and relaxing. We said goodbye to our porcupine and tried once more to catch sight of the golden-cheeked warbler to no avail. So we drove back to Rte. 90 and had some more Texas BBQ on our way to Big Bend. We knew it was too far to make before nightfall but weren’t sure where we would stay before that. Seminole State Park was too close, although I would have liked to see the petroglyphs and cave paintings. We stopped briefly to take some pictures of the Pecos River as it dug its way toward the Rio Grande and checked out a couple of picnic areas on the sides of the road. When we reached one just a few miles outside of Marathon (the entry point for Big Bend) we knew we had found the spot. There had been very few cars or trucks on our way there, despite the fact that I90 is a major road, and the desert was beautiful and oh so quiet. We ate at one of the two picnic benches which were sheltered from the hot sun, played our nightly game of Rummy and packed it in, listening to the coyotes call in the distance. There had been no vehicles at all in either direction for hours at a time and only heard one or two go by all night.
Woke up Easter morning to a stunning pink sky and drove to Marathon for breakfast. The desert scape soon gave way to jagged sky islands with tall mountains appearing in the distance. Marathon proper is a small town only a few hundred feet long but it provided us with fuel for the van and for us – coffee and delicious scones and muffins. We found ourselves with a brief moment of cell service so we chatted with the Bergerons in Maine and Lawsons and Kuhns at home.
Big Bend is awesome, literally, with the Chisos Mountains winding through from across the Mexican border creating steep cliffs and deep canyons. Our campgrounds is in Chisos Basin, carved out of the rocky foothills of the mountain range. There are more than a couple of hairpin turns on the road down but neither of us flinched. And we added a couple of birds to our trip list here – the cactus wren, canyon towhee, Scott’s Oriole, western flycatcher and the Oregon subspecies of the dark-eyed junco.
Took a ride on Monday to the Rio Grande Village and finally spotted a road runner – or five or six, including one that visited our campsite – twice. Our birding here is complete.
The Ultimate Road Trip 