2013 Summer Vacation - Part 4

Ok - if you bear with me I think I can finish our vacation pictures in one last blog post.  LOL!!   I want to share the rest of the pictures of Big Bend National Park, pictures from our drive from Presidio to Trelingua, and I have a few pics from San Angelo State Park!

First, here are the pictures from Big Bend National Park!  I shared in the previous post about how HOT it was down there!!  We still had some fun memories though!

 

The next few pics are on the drive up to Chiso Mountains.

 A view of the Chiso Mountain lodge and cabins

 The view of "The Window" from the lodge

The next group of pictures are from our first "swimming spot" in the Rio Grande.  The kids wanted to go swimming soooo bad!!  But even the river was way down!

 The next group of pictures are from the Santa Elena Canyon!!  Breathtakingly beautiful but also incredibly HOT!!!  We did swim in the Rio Grande some more though.

 Uh oh!  Mommy came out on the other shore...in another country! LOL!

 These next set of pictures were of some tracks that I found while the kids were swimming at yet another spot in the river.  I tried to do a plaster cast of one of them but the track was so big that I didn't have enough to cover the track to make a cast :-(  I was upset...but at least I got some good pictures of the tracks.

 this was the track that I was trying to cast - you can see how I didn't have enough plaster :-(

On our way back to the camper from our canyon adventure we decided to go check out another canyon - Boquillas Canyon.  Granny had already said that she wanted to stay in the truck - she had gotten to hot from Santa Elena canyon.  Well the kids were misbehaving so we decided that they would just stay in the truck too and Daniel and I would hike the trail to the canyon.  Well when we started the trail it was lighly raining (but we were so hot that it felt good! )  We came to a point where we were able to see the canyon and got some pictures and the rain started picking up so we decided that we better turn back and head back to the truck instead of trying to continue to the canyon. 

Well as we were trying to get back to the truck it started hailing!!!!  In fact I started feeling it and mentioned that it felt like someone was throwing rocks at me and then looked down and noticed it was hail!!  We found a rock that we are able to duck under a bit to at least cover our heads but our legs continued to get pelted as the hail got bigger - up to a quarter size!  I was soooo glad when it finally stopped and we were able to run to the truck!!  But I had some bruises on my legs after that!!  OMG THAT HURT!!!!

 The view of the canyon

 The view of the storm coming

We got back to the camper and discovered that the storm had hit that area too and ripped our awning!!  We did get a beautiful rainbow shot though!!  (and as I looked up into the sky I had a raindrop hit me right in the middle of my eye - took that as a sign to just go inside LOL!)

And did I mention how hot it was down there???  It was so hot that it melted the caulk off our camper!!! 

Right close to our camping spot was a closed off area due to being a sensitive nesting area for common black hawks.  One evening I took my camera over there and did spot a couple of nests!  I came home and looked up their nests on the internet and found pics that look just like these so I am pretty sure these were black hawk nests!  :-)

 This was just another shot I got from down around the camper.

 Geckos were EVERYWHERE down there!  Spotted ones and striped ones!!  Seth finally caught one!  It bit his finger on the first catch but he caught it again!

 Aaron was chasing Granny with it.  She didn't want to have anything to do with it LOL

Ok - the next group of pictures are from our ride from Presidio to Terlingua.   You pass through Big Bend State Park through part of the drive.  We actually did this drive while we were staying at Davis Mountains...but since it was through the Big Bend area I thought to include it with the Big Bend posts.  Papa was with us this day :-)

We stopped at this roadside stops that had some cool rocks to get some pics.

 Daniel was trying to set the timer on his camera so we could get a picture of all of us - but we don't know what was up - the timer was too fast.  This is the only shot of Daddy we got LOL

 So here we are without Daddy.

 Will it fit??

 A roadrunner

 We found a teepee for Seth!!!  (he LOVES indians)

 We found some more teepees

So the last leg of our journey was San Angelo State Park.  It was the halfway point for coming home so we thought we would check out that state park and stay a couple of nights there.  PaPa met back up with us there.  

What was funny was the kids were really wanting to swim as I mentioned before.  So we looked up this state park online and it said it had a huge lake with boating, fishing and swimming.  So we kept telling the kids that we would get in plenty of swimming in there.  Well we got there and found out that about a year ago the lake dried up!!  There was no water...which meant no swimming!  Poor kids.

 Here Daddy was trying to fix Alyssa's tire on her bike.

 The boat ramp!!  See how far out the now little pond is!

 Alyssa enjoying some ice cream!

Some wild turkeys near the campsite.

I will end this recap of our vacation with a few cute pictures that were taken on the way home.  We stopped at Hard 8's in Stephenville for lunch!!  Granny had fun dancing with the kids!

Well that is our 2013 Summer Vacation!!  I managed it get it all in only 4 posts! LOL!  I hope you have enjoyed this recap!!  Can't wait until our next camping trip!  :-)

Until next time,
Kellie