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| Closed Canyon |
 |
| Barton Warnock |
We
headed east the next morning on Hwy 170 with Sam leading aiming for
the Big Bend Country. It was good riding with a rolling twisting and
scenic road and little traffic. Our first stop was a fantastic cache
called “Closed Canyon” with 36 Favorite points. However, it
turned into a disaster for me. It was a beautiful narrow canyon with
steep sides. Unfortunately I reinjured an Achilles tendon initially
hurt hunting last fall. It had taken about 5 months to heal so I was
pretty bummed out. Then, when we left I inadvertently didn’t
completely close the top of my tail bag and my jacket liner and hat
blew out. I didn’t discover the loss until later – the jacket
liner much later because we were getting into triple digit
temperatures and I wasn’t about to need it.
Our
next stop was at the Barton Warnock Visitor Center in the Big Bend Ranch State Park. Barton was a
renowned botanist and professor at Sul Ross State University in Ft.
Stockton for 50 years. He was an expert in the flora of the west
Texas region. I suppose all of us Warnocks are related if you go
back far enough but I don’t know of any close family connection.
The center had a lot of interesting exhibits and I wish we had had
more time to spend there. We found a cache there and I bought a hat
replacing the one I lost.
 |
| Rio Grande Canyon |
We
continued east and entered the Big Bend National Park. We took a
side road that led down to the Rio Grande. It was a twisty pretty
much all downhill road to the river. Down at the river was the most
spectacular part of the park we saw. There was a huge towering wall
with an opening through which the river flowed. We enjoyed some
lunch there at a shaded picnic table.
I
decided to head toward Ft. Stockton while Sam stopped at the National
Park Visitor Center. He always buys a hat to commemorate his trip
and he wanted to get one there. It was extremely hot (have I
mentioned that?) and I stopped for a couple more caches before
reaching Ft. Stockton. One was another Warnock cache. This one was
in honor of Roland rather than Barton. He was the Texas State Road
Maintenance Supervisor from 1927 to 1981 and was responsible for
creating many of the road side picnic areas where this cache was
located.
I
decided to get a couple of caches in Ft. Stockton before going to the
motel to get Pecos County out of the way. Two caches I had logged in
the park took care of Brewster County. The first Ft. Stockton cache
was at a Scout hut. The next was at the Ft. Stockton military
cemetery. It was enclosed by a stone wall about 4’ high. I had
parked my bike just off the street next to the wall. It was parked
in a slight depression making the bike a little more upright that it
would ordinarily be with the kickstand down. It was really windy and
after retrieving the cache and returning to my bike a big gust of
wind blew it right over before I could get on it. While I was trying
to figure what to do a big burly kid in a pickup stopped, jumped out,
grabbed the front of the bike while I had the back and lifted it
right up. Just some slight damage to a windshield mount which cost
less than $15.
Sam
and I arrived at the same time at the Deluxe Inn. It was an old
motel being remodeled. The outside didn’t look like much but the
rooms were very nice. A thunderstorm hit just after we checked in
and the motel clerk came over and invited us to park our bikes under
the walkway roof as well as giving us some rags. She was very
thoughtful. We pooled all our quarters and did our laundry here.
This was our shortest day with 280 miles, 6 caches and 1 DNF. To be continued.
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