Sunday, January 11, 2009
December 17th: Northern Entrance of Big Bend
In constrast to the previous day, we drove to the North Entrance of the park. My Mom was feeling ill, so she decided to stay back. It was just Annie, Uncle John, and me. My Uncle rented a small cottage, Cottage 101, and we left Mom there to recuperate since we couldn't book the rooms another night. On the way up north, we stopped to view a fossil exhibit. Evidently, the geology goes back to before the dinosaurs which isn't too surprising since the area used to be an ancient shallow sea before the dinosaurs. But in this particular area one can find dinosaur bones in one strata and ancient mammals from a swamp in the next strata that might be exposed next to the earlier strata due to erosion. We saw a Harris's Hawk shortly after leaving the fossil display. At the North entrance to the park, we saw a Rock Wren. There were numerous other small birds singing in the area, but they were avoiding humans. Prior to the North Entrance to the park, we also saw Common Ground Dove, but they were a reddish hue, not as gray as the one in the photo.
Labels: Big Bend North Entrance
