Spring Break in Big Bend
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Well I've just gotten back from a fabulous Spring Break '97 trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. There were 11 of us in total on the trip - ten of whom were biology graduate students here at Michigan. Ten of us were first-years too (although not the same ten). We all departed the evening of Friday, February 28th in three vehicles for the 30-hour ride ahead of us. Boy were we glad to leave the cold of Michigan behind us. You can tell that we were itching to leave in this "before" photo:
(Back row: Niki, Kristi, Teresa,
Kat, Lindsay, me, Nate)
(Front row: Nopporn, Christina, Alec, Kate)
After many shifts of driving, filling up gas, and meals at such "hot spots" as an Arkansas Waffle House, we found ourselves driving in the enormous state of Texas. Almost another day later, we entered to boundary of the park at night. This began my week-long attempt to see and learn about flora and fauna which I had never seen before. You can click here to see my bird-list from the trip. Alec got the first great find, catching a glimpse of the elusive ringtail as we were driving into the park. Pretty soon thereafter we were all watching jack tabbit after jack rabbit run before our vehicles. We wound our way to our first night's camp and some of us (myself included) were shocked at just how cold the desert was at night. I was expecting cold, but the 45 degrees every night was more than I would have guessed.
The next morning we all awoke to our first glimpse of Big Bend's beauty in daylight (with the exception of Alec). The desert scene around us looked something like:
For the first day, we all traveled together to the visitor's center. Here some of us wandered around the desert for the first time. I took this picture of some of the desert vegetation (including cactus of the genus Opuntia) with mountains in the background:
If you are interested in the vegetation we saw in Big Bend, check out this page. Kat will even show you some prickly pears. Then we split up into a couple of groups. Some of us hiked up a trail among mountains which led to a hot springs by the Rio Grande (the Rio Grande isn't all that big by the way). From these mountains there was a great view of the spectacular Rio Grand River Valley. Here are a few pictures of the view:
And it wasn't only beautiful where there was water. The desert itself from this viewpoint was breathtaking. While rummaging around I ran into a bush that was covered with tiny black balls. Upon careful insepction, these balls were actually flowers that were pollinated by Calliphorid flies and Halictid bees. Here's are two views of some of the desert vegetation from a plateau:
Being a group of college kids, we of course felt it was necessary to act even more childish. One classic example of this was the incessant need to climb anything that dared to block our way (or even to be close to the path). Here's a picture of Kristi and me climbing our way up to a small ledge at one portion of the Hot Springs Trail:
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