Study Butte, Texas

Gene and Mickey took a 30 mile ride today, up a long steep hill then down a very long, beautiful climb to the Rio Grande. Janette, the boys, and I drove ahead to pick them up at the end. I wanted to bird. Not much to see bird-wise, but did get a lifer: black-throated sparrow.

Big Bend is absolutely spectacular. It’s so huge that of course we only scratched the surface. We were on a flat at the Rio Grande, looking at Mexico in the form of a huge (1,000 ft., maybe 2,000 ft.) wall. We drove at sunset to a place where the river runs out of the wall through a narrow canyon. Ate dinner there and hiked up at dark to see the river cut through. Watched the stars for an hour or so, then watched the moon rise. We were looking at this split in the wall where the river cut through and on one side of the canyon was Mexico, the other was the U.S. Wow!