Big Bend National Park - arrived at last

We left Yellowstone and headed north into Montana to visit Little Bighorn Battlefield, then followed the Yellowstone River to Makoshika State Park to see the fossils. We continued east into North Dakota to go through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We spent a night in the Park and a morning hike into the badlands took us through some interesting scenery and we fortuned upon two Golded Eagles doing aerial acrobatics close enough that field glasses were not necessary to identify then. We continued south into South Dakota and stayed several days at Ellsworth AFB from where we took side trips into the South Dakota Badlands before continuing further south into Nebraska where we got to see the old Oregon Trail. We toured a museum at the Scotts Bluff National Monument and I can honestly say I learned more about the Oregon Trail and westward expension than I ever knew before. (History was not one of my greatest interests in my youth) From Scotts Bluff it was south into Colorado Springs where we set up camp in Spook and Brenda McFillin's backyard RV lot. They have electrical hook-ups for their many Rving friends. At one point there were two RVs parked in their back yard.

Colorado Springs was our jumping off point to catch military hops back East. Getting hops this time was not real easy but we did get out on a C-130 to Gulfport Mississippi where we rented a car to drive to Birmingham. We visited Jayme, Chris and Braelyn - grand kids are great!!!! Ample babysitting opportunities were appreciated. We managed a flight from nearby Maxwell AFB to Andrews AFB where again we rented a car and drove to Denton, MD to spend time with Bill, Ann, Marisa and Sammy. Took the kids to a corn maze and Octoberfest play area on a nearby farm. We painted pumpkins, ran through the maze, climbed on hay bale mountains, took hay rides, and tired ourselves well. We drove from there to PA to spend a little time with Mom and Dad where they repeadedly beat us at brutal games of dominoes. We also visited Bill and Margurite Mengel where I got a volume of geneology data. We made an early morniging stop at the Leesport Farmers Market then headed down to Andrews AFB where after a two day delay we caught a direct flight to Colorado Springs.

We said our goodbys to the McFillins and headed south to Big Bend National Park. We spent several nites in Palo Duro Canyon State Park,
enjoyed the scenery then made our way south through Lubbock where I went to pilot training in 1970. Then to Midland and finally into Big Bend.

We will be at the Visitor Information Center at Persimmon Gap. The park is putting us through two weeks of training before we actually start working. Work consists of three days a week keeping the Visitor Center manned. Only one of us have to be there at a time. Then we have to spend an additional 8 hours doing something else. Hiking the 200 miles of trails, canoeing the 250 miles of Rio Grande, helping botanists and biologists, checking out campsites, or doing research assistance work are all acceptable additional activities--and they call this work?

The training is awesome. There are some administrative functions but we have been briefed on each of the districts in the park, have taken two short hikes to historical sites, were briefed by a cactus expert on the cacti of the Chihuahuan desert, took one 12 mile hike up into the Chisos Mountains where classmate blew bubbles thousands of feet above the valley floor to see the scenery from the South Rim and then took a two day canoeing trip down the Rio Grand River through the Santa Elena Canyon.


This week we will do a field trip to aquaint us with the air quality issues and activities in the park, we will do a geology, archeology, and paleonotology field trip, as well a couple more trips to historical sites. We will spend a bit more time learning how to issue fishing permits, and back country permits and then we will be ready to start working on Sunday the 28th of October.