2003-11-07 Lost Mine and The Window 2003-11-08 Pine Canyon and Ernst Tinaja 2003-11-09 Cattail Canyon 2004-11-04 The Journey 2004-11-05 Casa Grande and Lost Mine 2004-11-06 Cattail Canyon 2004-11-07 Santa Elena Canyon and Cattail Falls 2005-06-01 Chisos Mountain Lodge 2005-06-02 Emory Peak 2005-06-03 Desert Views 2005-06-04 The Window at Sunset 2005-11-03 Cattail Canyon 2005-11-04 South Rim 2005-11-05 Santa Elena Canyon by Canoe 2005-11-06 Santa Elena Canyon by Canoe 2002-11-08 Emory Peak and South Rim 2002-11-09 Cattail Falls and Santa Elena Canyon 2002-11-09 Terlingua and Lajitas 2002-11-10 Old Ore Road and Hot Springs 2002-11-10 The Window at Sunset

Day 3 - Saturday, November 5, 2005

All of my vacation time in 2005 had thus far been devoted to canyons of the American West, so it was only fitting that I spend part of this trip exploring Big Bend's crown jewel, Santa Elena Canyon.  Santa Elena Canyon is a narrow, winding gorge, cut by the Rio Grande over millions of years as it changed course in response to the Mesa de Anguilla uplift.  The canyon, which runs for about 8 miles, has similar abrupt openings at both ends of the mesa.  It is, in places, as narrow as 25 feet with walls as high as 1500 feet.  A short hiking trail leads park visitors into the mouth of the canyon, but past about 1/4 mile, the walls close in and offer no further dry land upon which to hike.  The canyon at times is reminiscent of the Virgin River Narrows, but the Rio Grande, while not the mighty river it used to be, is still generally too deep and swift to be hiked through safely.  So to really see the canyon requires a boat.

Maxwell, Will, Sharon, and I were willing victims ... urrr... participants in an overnight canoe expedition of Santa Elena Canyon, led by Kevin (a master canoeist and longtime member of the club.)  On Saturday morning, we loaded our gear into (and onto) Kevin's RV and towed the canoes down to Lajitas, our put-in point.  We would spend all day Saturday paddling the 12 miles between Lajitas and the upper end of Santa Elena Canyon, over mostly flat water and riffles as the Rio Grande wound through limestone and sandstone formations with classic desert hues.  We pulled ashore on a beach near the upper end of the canyon and made camp for the night, feasting on tuna casserole and MRE's (which are not half bad, by the way) and boxed wine (which was half bad.)

At the risk of being cliche', the stars at night really were big and bright.  And there were more of them falling than usual, due to the Taurid meteor shower.  Sometime around 9 or 10 PM, a big meteor detonated in the atmosphere to the west of camp and left a trail that lit up the sky as bright as lightning for about 10 seconds.  Apparently a handful of similar detonations were reported across the country at about the same time, some of them catalogued as UFO reports.