Monday February 18

Woke up to the coldest morning yet, frost on the car
windows. It was too cold and too dark to make coffee
so I went to Shirley's Bakery, actually now owned by
Don. THey boys there told me that Marathon waxed and
waned as far as becoming something. It was now on the
wane.

Drove to Big Bend National Park and Wow. Cliffs,
mountains, canyons, cacti, desert. I'm in the SE part
of the park, right on the Rio Grande. Went for a bike
ride to an overlook. As I rode in a young Mexican boy
scurried away, down the slope, hopped onto a horse and
rode across the river, which is only about 25 yards
wide. Sitting at the side of the parking lot was an
assortment of homemade souvenirs for sale with a small
sign in very poor English asking that people buy the
stuff and leave money in the jar as they are very poor
and 9/11 has cut their tourism to 0. Sitting on the
Mexican bank were 5 or 6 other people and a number of
goats. Before 9/11 people waded back and forth across
the Rio Grande to shop, see relatives, sell trinkets
or eat Mexican food. Now, even though you could
almost jump across the river, there are no official
crossing points in Big Bend. The 4 little towns right
on the river have died.

Took a short hike to some hot springs. Someone built
a spa on the banks of the Rio Grande in the 30's
hoping to make it big in the healing trade. All
that's left are a few abandoned buildings and the
foundation of the bath house which acts as a tub for
the hot water that bubbles up. One wall of the bath
separates it from the river. So you can get in the
100 degree water, jump in the cold river and back into
the bath. Two families from Marseille were soaking.
One teenage daughter speaks four languages fluently,
they all spoke English well enough to have a
conversation. And I let them know that Mareseille is
on the Atlantic (it's on the Meditteranean).

The part of the campground with hookups is pretty
small. So a lot of RV's use generators when they
can't plug in. I'm in the no generator part. I
walked through the generator area on my way to the
bathroom and it sounds like a hive of drunk baritone
bees.

It's warm tonight. I'm seeing the first bugs of the
trip: little moths flying around the

lantern.

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