Day 39 April 8, 2011 Friday Total Mileage: 1666 Today: 54 miles

Got up early and off just at sunrise… today was predicted to be very hot!  I started just East of Del Rio and was able to complete 35 miles by Noon.  The terrain was nearly flat and the wind was with me. 

 My route is going very close to the Mexico border and the Rio Grande River.  The southern boundary of the US seems well protected; I saw quite a few boarder patrol officers while riding today.  I spoke with a couple at the inspection checkpoint. 

I crossed over Amistad Reservoir which has 540 miles of shoreline in Texas.  Amistand (which means friendship in Spanish) lies on the United States-Mexican border and was created for flood control, water storage, power generation and recreation in 1969.  Both Mexico and the US cooperated in the building and managing of the dam. 

I finished just before 2:00 pm, at the Seminole Canyon Texas State Park and Historic Site, elevation: 1549 feet; the temperature was nearly 100. Seminole Canyon received its name in honor of the US Army’s Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts, garrisoned at Fort Clark.  The scouts protected the West Texas frontier from marauding Apache and Comanche bands between 1872 and 1914.  The Canyon has also been home to dinosaurs, ice age hunters with stone spears… when prehistoric artisans painted rock shelter with elaborate mural-sized drawings.  Also inhabited by pioneers attempting to tame the land with rail, barbed wire and windmills.




Ariel, when you were young you liked rocks, stones & fossils; using geological info how did these rock get formed this way?




My father use to warn us that if he had to stop the car, we'd be out the door.  Someone really did have to stop the car...



Another catus in bloom

Sheep

Torch bush