Dear friends and family:

We stopped in Arizona to see Saguaro NP, Casa Grande NM and the Biosphere, all of which were fascinating. We got to meet up with our friend Steve for a tour of Saguaro. I won't include any pictures, but of course we have so many! We'll certainly show any or all to you if you want to see them.

Our next stops included Carlsbad Cavern NP. The second picture here is one of the formations in a cave we toured on a ranger-led flashlight hike. It was an interesting tour because there was no artificial lighting in the cave, and the formations were really spectacular. This figure has many names - La Muerte, the Grim Reaper, or the Klansman (the ranger apologized for the politically incorrect name but he shared it anyway). The caves of Carlsbad Caverns were formed about 10 million years ago. These are perhaps the best caves we've ever been in and definitely recommend them. If you can get there between March and October the Mexican bats are there in the thousands and put on a show every evening as they fly in and out of the cave. We were there too late so all we got to see and smell was the bat guano (poop), not quite as exciting. The first picture is of Ruth looking at a prehistoric mound of bat guano. They used to mine that stuff to fertilize the orange trees in California - anyone need a job? Can you imagine mining bat guano 10 hours a day? Not for the faint of stomach.

After a brief stop in Guadalupe Mountains NP, where the wind was bitterly cold (I think this was when all you northerners were getting colder than normal temps), we headed to Big Bend NP in southern Texas. I mean southern - catch the last photo of the Rio Grande, the left canyon wall is in Mexico. You used to be able to cross into Mexico from the park, but no more, the Border Patrol has taken care of that. In fact, we had at least 4 road stops to be questioned by the Border Patrol as we traveled along route 90. I think they either have too much time, too much money or too many officers, maybe all of the above.

We loved Big Bend. We spent our first full day there hiking in the Chisos Mountains basin, a 12.5 mile loop. You see the picture of Brian looking out over the South Rim of the basin towards the Mexican border. At this point we're about 15 miles from the Rio Grande. We saw deer, javelinas, birds (the Mexican jay, the rufous sided tohee and some unidentified warblers) as well as a mother black bear with her three cubs. The picture shows one of the cubs checking us out. Notice the tree with the peeling bark - this is locally known as the "gringo tree" because it's bark turns red then peels, just like a gringo! We had beautiful weather and stayed only three nights, then ran out of time.