Big Bend National Park

We arrived in Big Bend and went straight to Rio Grande Village RV Park, thinking we would need the hook-ups and the showers, etc. Well, that was a mistake as the "Park" was more like a "Parking Lot," and the showers were "Pay-as-you-wash!" So the next day we set off for Chisos Basin Campground – set in the little inset basin that you can see to the right of the middle of this first picture, part way, but not all the way, up the mountains. [The inveterately curious can look at Notes #1 and #2 for the origin of the name "Chisos."]

On Sunday morning we hiked the half-mile trail up to the Chisos Mountain Lodge for their buffet breakfast, and, coincidentally, the gorgeous scenery on the way up. Here's a picture of the Lodge's dining building with picture window out on the scenery.

After breakfast, on the way down, we hiked over to where you could look out through "The Window," a formation that appears to open up to the valley floor below. Later we got a view of the campground from above.

While at the campground, we were "forced" to wake up each morning and look out at the
surrounding countryside, as you can see in pictures six and seven – it was really tough to stay there.

Monday, after another breakfast at their buffet (during which the kitchen actually ran out of sausage and bacon) we set off for our last chat with Marguerite and on down the road to Presidio, but that's in the next installment.

Note #1 "Several explanations of the origin of the name of the range have been offered over the years. One held that chisos means "ghost," and that the mountains were named for the ghost of the Apache chief Alsate, who hid in the mountains for a time. Another version was that chisos was the plural of chis, meaning "clash of arms" (chischás in Castilian), since some reported hearing battle sounds at night in the mountains as the ghosts of Spanish soldiers returned to fight again. A third story was that chisos was a corruption of the Spanish hechizos, "bewitchments" or "enchantments." The mountains were almost certainly named, however, for the Chizos Indians."

Note #2 "Beautiful they are but the Chisos are also mountains of mystery and remain a little aloof from the first time visitor. The mystery even extends to their name. I had been taught as a child that the name Chisos was Spanish for “ghost”. Not so I find. My Spanish dictionary doesn’t even have a “ch” section. But the experts are generally agreed that the mountains were named for the Chizos Indians and that “Chizos” meant ghost in their language. Since the Chizos did not have a written language and there are no more Chizos Indians around to speak their language I suppose we shall have to take that on faith---unscientific as that may be. There definitely is a ghostlike quality to the Chisos in the early morning fog."