Booker: Seminole Canyon State Park

This State Park is just a short 7 mile hike away from the Rio Grande and Mexico. There are spectacular views here with a scrudland of desert plants. Every plant here is out to get you with some sort of pricker or secretion.

Ocotillo

Prickly Pear

We hiked along the desert trail to where the Pecos River meets the Rio Grande. The cliffs are up to 160 feet high and the water is 100 feet deep in the Rio Grande. The hike itself gives a good idea of what the early settlers had to endure. There is no shade. We are taller than every plant. It was hot-85 degrees, and sunny. Poor Sid. He could see the water but couldn't get to it to swim.

Ah Mexico

We could see evidence of wild animals-didn't see any up close, though. When we got to the end of the trail and we were looking out over the river we heard voices-they were Canadian! Hey, they were us! We were echoing off the canyon walls. Never had that happen before.
This state park also has a section of canyon that has rock paintings from between 3500-4000 years ago.

These canyon shelter paintings are about 10,000 years old.

This Big Bend region desert park is along the Rio Grande. Steep canyons can be found throughout the park. The canyons empty out into the Rio Grande. The water from the Amistad resevoir backs up into a number of these canyons. It is in these canyons that ancient peoples painted on the canyon walls where they lived. These canyon shelter paintings were done continuously from around 10,000 on through 4,000 years ago.

A state ranger leads this tour to prevent any kind of damage to what's left of the paintings. This was a 2 hour walk inside the canyon-very interesting.
Met some people here from Switzerland. They are camping in a Toyota truck camper which they shipped from Zurich to Bolivia and are driving north. They're now touring the USA in it.