An interesting couple of days

Well, this has certainly been an interesting week for us. We started the week with an unexpected, albeit amusing, van repair. The excerpt below from the repair bill is pretty self-explanatory.

It turns out that during the 8-9 days that we had not moved the van, a family of rodents (mice or pack rats presumably) had moved into our van's engine, making nests, storing food stuffs (mesquite beans by the pound, prickly pear cactus pads, etc.) and basically chewing through many hoses, wires and lines, including our brake lines!  We even found large pieces of wood, making us wonder if they were planning on building some kind of structure - perhaps a nice three bedroom with a porch? Here is a photo of just one of the piles of stuff we pulled out of the engine.

Luckily Andre noticed right away when we started driving the van that something wasn't right - or it could have been a more serious calamity. As it was, we called for a tow to the nearest auto repair place in the next town and they fixed it the next day. Apparently, it is not an uncommon problem around here! At least we got to see how a tow truck would tow our van.

 

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week we spent both days riding along with Ranger Rob, his wife Angie, and a local teacher in the park's TRT (Teacher Ranger Trainee) program, doing some in-depth exploration of the park. They have been researching Big Bend cemeteries and related history for a teacher program that will take place here in the fall. It was a fantastic couple of days in some more remote sections of the park - I'll post some really interesting photos from that in a separate entry.

We capped the week off on Friday with a rafting trip through Colorado Canyon in the Big Bend State Park with Far Flung Adventures, another local outfitter that runs river trip in both the National and State park here.  It was our first time rafting and we had a great time. The river was quite high and rather muddy but that didn't stop us from jumping out into the Rio Grande to cool off along the way!

Andre taking a swim in the river as we floated

Our lunch-time stop on a grassy bank

 

Although there were a few small sets of rapids along the way, it was generally pretty calm rafting throughout the 11 mile canyon trip and we saw some great scenery along the way. We got off the river at about 2:00 and were back at our apartment in time to see a wild storm roll in and watch the lightening, winds and deluge of rain from the porch of our apartment. Andre hurried to cook an early dinner in case the electricity went out but we never lost power.

 

The final bit of adventure was just this morning. We were on our way up to the Basin Visitor Center for another work day when we noticed what looked like a dog moving along the side of the road up ahead. It was this coyote, who was acting very odd and disoriented and did not seem to be very afraid of us or our car when we slowed down to investigate it. 

 

 

We feared for a moment that it might be rabid, but soon realized that it had actually been injured. It was bleeding some in it's hind quarter and was pretty roughed up, either from a car or maybe from some kind of larger animal? It ran off eventually but was staying close to the road so we called it in to dispatch to let them know there was an animal situation, as an injured animal could potentially become a danger to visitors. We heard later that they sent a ranger out to look for the coyote but we didn't hear anything further. Sadly, he looked pretty injured, so I'm not hopeful that this story had a happy ending. Just one of the not-so-cheerful realities of life in a wild park.