I had hoped to be able to post new information on my current photo expedition in the Big Bend region of Texas at least every other day during my trip, but finding Wi-Fi in this extremely remote area of the state has been a challenge at best.

Day 1 - May 1, 2009 - View in the Gallery

I left Amarillo before sunrise headed for the FIESTA! event sponsored by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at the refurbished Big Bend Ranch State Park located just east of Presidio, Texas. The park is the newest and largest of all the state parks in Texas. I was looking forward to special park tours offered to members of the media and a chance to hob-nob with some of my counterparts and help promote the park. I expected three days of exploring the park, capturing images of landscapes, wildflowers and wildlife. Much of the park is only accessible by high clearance vehicles and the planned activities including transportation to sites I could not reach in my own car.

I had about 550 miles to travel before the park facilities closed at 4:30 in the afternoon. I don't like to travel much under the pressure of time anymore because I tend to see too many things along the way that compel me to stop and record the moment.

As I made the approach to the town of Abernathy on I-27, I recalled Amarillo artist Mardy Lemmons talking about the giant "Jesus in a Box" during one of our regular Friday morning artist's coffees at the Blue Front Cafe. He had mentioned the site faced east and the morning light was just about right as I drove through downtown.

I need to travel to Abernathy just to capture some images for the Gallery. To take the time now would be cutting into my chances of getting to the park on time.

I finally located the Giant Jesus statue on the southern edge of town. Sure enough, it is easy to spot from the Interstate and the structure housing the statue looked to be about 20 feet high. I must say that this rendition of the Crucifixion of Christ is one of the more gruesome I have seen. The building housing the statue has glass on three sides and yet going inside seemed a little claustrophobic. It was challenging to get the complete statue in frame using my widest lens.

This was a good time to say a little prayer and ask for a blessing on my trip. It seemed like a good thing to do while there and start off on a good note.

Arriving in Lubbock a few minutes later, I stopped off to visit a college friend who also happened to have Wi-Fi. It was a good time to visit and send an update on the trip via Twitter. I was just telling my friend that the media had stopped referring to the Swine Flu and was calling it H1N1 flu. "Looks more like Hinny Flue in print", I joked. Then I was shocked... just saw a Twitter update from Parks and Wildlife. They had just canceled the FIESTA! due to concerns about the HINNY FLUE!

I called the park headquarters and a departmental media contact in Austin to confirm the message. The event had indeed been canceled but the park would still be open. I decided to continue on my mission. Perhaps I might get a little special treatment if few other media people were there and the cool spring weather in the Texas desert wouldn't last for long. (The Amarillo forecast called for chilly weather all week, should have checked the Presidio forecast I think, more on that later.)

Now might be a good time to mention that you can click on any of the photos on this page in order to view all the images I managed to capture on this photo adventure. I will also post a link to the album of images for each day as I go.

My map revealed I would be near the southeastern corner of New Mexico by the time I got close to the Texas town of Kermit. Since I was no longer in a big rush to get to the park by 4:30pm, I thought it might be fun to see if I could locate the US Geological Service marker for the state boundary. I had my GPS receiver along with me so I figured finding the marker would be a snap.

My Texas map didn't show a road near the corner boundary and my GPS map doesn't do a very good job of distinguishing dirt from asphalt topped roads. I managed to stay on black top and off of private dirt oil lease roads when I stopped at a gas processing plant to see if I could get some information on access to the boundary. 

Thanks to Jeff Fields, Plant Manager for Southern Union Gas Services I found getting to the boundary marker was going to be easy and I wasn't that far away. Jeff had an interesting story about the road which runs right up the Texas - New Mexico state boundary to a recently developed oil field. Seems that when the field was first being developed, trucks from Kermit had to travel into Jal, New Mexico then East into Texas. These trucks were apparently being fueled in Kermit and the state of New Mexico began posting troopers along the highway to issue tickets for non-payment of New Mexico highway use taxes.

So a new paved road was put in on the Texas side of the boundary which cut down the distance to travel by over half and in doing so, avoided having to pay the State of New Mexico for use of their roads.

Jeff also showed me on Google Maps where there were two large sink holes which have developed recently between Kermit and Wink. But after having spent some time at the boundary marker and the surprise discovery of an official geocache at the location, I felt the need to move on because it was already about 1pm and I had many miles to go. The sink holes would have to wait for another visit down this way.

Traveling through Monahans brought back memories of starting first grade, fried fruit pies, pulling my baby sister around the block in a red Radio Flyer wagon and Webelo scouts. Neither of the schools I attended were still standing and I only located the last place our family lived although I drove all through the first neighborhood we lived in I didn't recognise our first house there.

Pecos was the next stop on the way to Presidio. This was the first town I remember because we lived here in two locations until I was about 6. Our first home was on an old air base used to train bomber pilots during World War II. I was beginning to run out of travel time but wanted to see the old base and perhaps the giant house that Billy Sol Estes built. I remember going on a special car ride just to go look at that house, It was bigger than any house I had ever seen situated on a field of manicured lawn anchored by three palm trees joined at the base.

I did locate the Estes house and was immensely disappointed that it no longer resembled the giant house I remembered and it appeared to sit on an average size lot with no palms in sight.  I also found nothing was left of the old air base with the exception of a runway and a water tower. I wanted to go see if the farm house we lived in surrounded by cotton fields was still standing about 5 miles west of town but time was wasting and after consulting the map, saw there was a good chance I would be headed back this way on the trip back home. So the farm house could wait.

Balmorhea State Park was the next destination on my schedule of Texas parks to visit on this trip.

This is a small park based around an old natural spring. According to the TPWD web site, "San Solomon Springs has provided water for travelers for thousands of years. Artifacts indicate Indians used the spring extensively before white men came to the area. In 1849, the springs were called Mescalero Springs for the Mescalero Apache Indians who watered their horses along its banks. The present name was given by the first settlers, Mexican farmers who used the water for their crops and hand-dug the first irrigation canals."

This state park is more suited to RV camping than tent camping. And though it has motel type lodging available I was looking forward to some tent time on this trip. There was about just enough daylight to move on to one more state park to find a camping site near Ft. Davis. The park is in the Davis mountains and it would be a welcomed cool break after what turned out to be a blisteringly hot afternoon.

The office at Davis Mountains State Park was already closed by the time I navigated to the park gate. Camp site self-registration is available after hours so I decided to head on up to the end of the road to the McDonald Observatory operated by the University of Texas before the sun set.

I spent some time at a roadside park I remembered from childhood during my first trip to the Texas mountains on the way up to the observatory. The public is no longer allowed to drive up to the mountain top for a good view of the surrounding landscape. I was amazed how the site had changed and grown since my last visit here and the number of telescopes located here both large and small.

All the facilities were closed by this time and by the time I managed to located a camping site in the park below, it was already dark when I set about to make camp and supper.