113 and no chihuahuas

This is the third of our three nights in Big Bend. Tomorrow we move to Terlingua, home of west Texas chili and other culinary delights! It will be a welcome change.
 
We started the day driving out to Boquillas Canyon. We had hoped to float or paddle the river, but this late in the year, water levels are too low so we will be taking a different trip later in the week. Nevertheless a beautiful canyon, with an entrepreneur with a canoe on the Mexico side offering to bring over chicken tamales and other treats. We weren’t hungry, alas.

As one person observed, for generations the river was a connection not a border and people crossed freely from the Park to the Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to work, eat, visit, etc. Then, after 9/11 the border was closed and people were cut off from each other. Ten years ago they reopened it as the only unstaffed legal border crossing on the US/Mexico border. It is open four days a week and there is only a Park Service employee present. The crossing to Mexico by flat boat ferry was closed today, but we loved the gate barring the road! ​

This was also a day Laura passed two other women in serious knee braces and a third who looked at her and said, “damn, I left my brace in the hotel.”
​Our second hike was hot and exposed, with no shade offering relief. But wow, the flowers. We learned that we are in the Chihuahuan Desert. Did NOT see any namesake dogs.

​We ended the day with a short hike to the hot springs. Given that the car said it was 113 degrees, the appeal might have been limited. But by switching back and forth from the river to the springs (in the remnants of the old bath house) it was fun. In the heyday, you could stay for $1 a day and take the waters for 25 cents.

​Waiting for dinner, we experienced a desert sun-thunderstorm … lighting to the left, full sun to the right.  And a double rainbow.