So my fourth year of medical school has officially started -- with absolutely nothing to do with medicine. Actually, I lie. My fourth year of medical school started with a trip to Lake Travis, but I do not have any pictures to share of that yet so why quibble over details? The point is, I am now a fourth year medical student and it's time to start brain-purging vital clinically relevant information!Anyways, amongst all my scheming for the upcoming year this is one of the few trips I've had any success in putting together and might I say it went off... flawlessly? Perhaps not flawlessly, but I must say I rock at planning trips to Big Bend. Irregardless, we left last Tuesday morning, drove some seven or so hours, and arrived Tuesday afternoon. The drive was, unsurprisingly, boring. The South Texas desert landscape was pretty, but after 30 minutes or so of it by car it all kind of looks the same. There was one natural curiosity to be observed, however, and that was Adam driving with his lights on in the middle of the afternoon. Why? Some say swamp gas, but the truth may never be known.
That evening we also took a quick hike down to "The Window" which was a lovely rectangular space between two large stone walls which provided a lookout over a significant portion of the lower park. Never satisfied with what Nature provides; Josh, Paul, and I decided to climb up one of the flanking hill sides in order to obtain an even better view of the valley below. Although our ascent was successful, we each returned with a variety of cuts, scrapes, and abrasions complements of the local plant fauna. It seems all desert plants have a different way of greeting you with a two inch barbed appendage. The rest of our evening was spent relatively uneventfully at our camp in Chisos Basin aside from a frantic 3 AM securing of rain flies due to a hysterical fear of an impending rain which never materialized.
The next two days were then spent on the mighty Rio Grande or at least what there is of it. I feel that I was misled to believe as a child in elementary school that the Rio Grande was an impressive, powerful river on par with the Colorado and Mississippi. Well, my friends, it's not. It's mostly mud and heavy metals it turns out. Not that our rafting trip wasn't a good time nevertheless, just that most of our time was spent floating idly, followed by boat-dragging, and then only lastly by actually rafting through anything resembling rapids. All that aside, most the first day was spent outside Santa Elena Canyon and in the hot, hot sun while most of the second day was spent deep inside said canyon taking it easy and avoiding further mutagenesis. Our overnight campground though a bit hard to find was amazing, and truly we were the only ones out there aside from a few cows, road runners, and raccoons.
Thursday night we returned our raft and returned to the Chisos Basin campground. We finished off the macaroni, chili, and spaghetti dinner trifecta, had ourselves some wine, popcorn, and s'mores, and promptly retired for a good night's rest. The next day Adam, Paul, and Annie headed back early to take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, while Sara, Josh, and I trekked off for one last hike to Cattail Falls which our old-hippie shuttle driver had pointed out to us the day prior as the best unmarked hike in the park. While it was unmarked it was certainly not unknown, but despite doing the hike with a few other groups of people the end pool and falls were quite lovely. An impressive waterfall only when noted its location in the desert, the hike provided a nice end to our Big Bend experience. After that we hiked back to our car and unceremoniously drove the seven hours back to San Antonio for a prompt return to showers, full meals, and climate controlled residences. Not necessarily the most wild foray into the bush ever, but, I've come to realize, not too bad for a bunch of city-slicking medical students.
For the rest of the my trip photos check out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Scott.Scooter.Crabtree
For Sara's trip photos check out:
http://pictures.aol.com/ap/viewShare.do?shareInfo=qehO4z9cYlmELnYkvLWV%2b98GCFE3TuiFIj0fxlUJWuBWGd%2bBXiXp6w%3d%3d
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