Drove down with some friends that had visited the park years before, but it was just a drive through. They did Lost Mine and then headed to another national park on a 2 week 12-14 national park outing. They stayed through Wed morning and then headed out to Guadalupe. (Some of these photos have been posted in a couple other threads)
We spent Friday and Saturday night in the basin campground. It wasn't bad. I'm not real big on campgrounds because of all the humans.
My 1st trip to the Bend in 2010 I stayed in the desert every night.
The sunset through the Window on Good Friday.
Saturday we went down to the RGV and did the Hot Springs trail. They enjoyed that a lot.
Sunday morning Bobby and I headed out for our over night on the Marufo Vega. Eli stayed at the basin to keep our campsite there occupied. She's not really a backpacker and didn't want to do the trail after seeing the topo.
The ranger hinted it might be a very hot trip. I asked her would she recommend we not do it and she just said she wouldn't. We decided to git r done.
She was right. It was pretty hot when we got to the river. We hiked up and down the river a few hundred yards in each direction looking for the best shade and then stayed in it until shadows covered the river.
We ate after dark after it cooled some. A burro on the Mexican side woke us up every couple hours braying. We made a decision to get up early and hike out of the canyon by headlamp and be on the ridge before daylight. Timed it about right. There were some nice sunrise photos to be taken, but we wanted to be further down the trail before the heat kicked in. Our luck was good that morning. It stayed cloudy until we got to the wash the trail follows back to the trail head.
Got back to the basin, broke camp, and then drove over to Dugout Wells to eat lunch and relax in the shade. We ended up sitting there for a few hours before heading back to the basin and getting our room up on the hill in the 4plex. We stayed there 2 nights. Monday and Tuesday we did a number of hikes, the Window, Grapevine Hills, Croton Springs, etc.
Wednesday morning they headed out and I started doing my thing, looking for critters.
A few shots from grapevine Hills.
And a few from the river.
Took a lot more photos than this, but narrowed it down to some that I liked.
Had a great time. I've made two early April trips now. Thinking the next one will be in December or January.
