 | Day 5 - Stayed in Big Bend, TX |
Day 5 - Wed Dec 24, 2008Stayed in Big Bend, TX - 13 mi
Big Bend Ranch State Park is the area of a gigantic eroded magma dome called Solitario. From the satellite it looks like a gigantic meteor impact, so I was really hoping that it would look interesting from the ground. The road from my campsite to the center of the volcano was marked as 4wd-high clearance, so I decided that instead of risking getting the mini stuck I was going to try to walk in on the road. It looked to be about 5 miles on the road. So I packed up water, foot, and the camera and headed out early.
6.8 miles in I found a bizarre structure. Next to a well there was a covered structure over a freezer. The generator was gone, but the freezer was clearly mounted and most of the insulation was still intact. I have no idea why there would be a freezer there, there wasn't any ruins of a home that I could find. From there I struck out on what I thought was a road, which turned into a trail, which turned into nothing. That ended up being an arduous 3 mile trek up creek beds and hillsides, trying to get a view of the caldera. Unfortunately the area is so huge that from the ground it just looks like hills. It wasn't until I checked on google earth the route I had taken that I realized I had been inside the area I was looking for the entire time! The total trip ended up being 16.6 miles, by far the farthest hike I've ever taken. I got back to my camp site after the sun had set, completely exhausted. The last 5 miles were walked in a trance, just one foot after another.
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