Overly ambitious... and heart shaped rocks...

Heart Shaped Rocks! I explain in the last few paragraphs:



So... we made it through Big Bend... Right now we're in Marfa. we just had breakfast at a little coffee shop/juice bar/breakfast place called Squeeze Marfa. I'm listening to the man next to me chatting away on his cell phone in Norwegian... little does he know that I can understand part of his conversation... not very much.. but enough that would shock him. I'd tell him... but I need to type before I get into a conversation.


So... our Big Bend adventure:

On Monday, we left Marathon and headed towards Big Bend. We stopped in Alpine for groceries... and we stopped to take pictures along the way. We stopped in Terlingua Ghost Town.. it's not really a ghost town any more, because people live there... but the remenents of the ghost town are still there. We took pictures of the cemetery and old buildings...

Then the increasingly beautiful drive into Big Bend. Some areas of the park are still flooded and closed... we had no idea how big of a deal the floods were until we talked to locals...

Once we were in the park, we headed up to the Chisos Mountains. We decided to camp one night in the basin, and then spend the next hiking up to the South Rim.

Monday night we grilled out... our camp was visited by a group of 6 Javelinas... they were fine... and nice... they walked right up to us...

The next day we packed our backpacks and headed out on the 6.5 mile hike. We OVER packed... I couldn't even lift my backpack, and Justin's was so heavy that the strap of his ripped and we spent an hour duct taping it... The whole hike was up a mountain... NO RELIEF! It was the hardest thing either one of us has EVER done... I still have NO idea how we made it... we didn't make it to the top... but we made it 3 miles UP and that took us 5 hours! We were more than exhausted... we pitched our tent at the first campsite we came to and slept... for 13 hours! EXHAUSTED!


The next day we left our stuff at the campsite and hiked the rest of the way to the South Rim... it was beautiful. incredible. But we were hurting so bad, I'm not sure if we were able to enjoy it as much. But we did it.

After reading in the Big Bend hiking book about the hike... we realized that we overestimated our hiking abilities... and were overly ambitious... some may say STUPID. The book said it was VERY STRENUOUS but that every hiker "worth his or her salt" will try to hike the South Rim at least once... oops... we are two people who don't even work out! Even the hike down to the basin was so hard... it looked like we were beaten up badly... and we were.

That night we desperately needed showers... so we drove back to Terlingua and stayed at a motel there. Yesterday we woke up and drove back into Big Bend... we did a SHORT .25 mile hike... but mostly drove... a beautiful drive through desert... down to where the road was closed from flooding.

Something AMAZING happened.... I wanted to play Carter's CD for Justin... so we were listening to it and driving. I really felt like I could connect to the environment and the experience.... I felt like I could feel Carter around... We stopped and walked around... I said a little something... something like, if I really feel you, show me... let me find a heart shaped rock...

I'm NOT even kidding: As soon as I said that I looked around and EVERY rock where I was standing was heart shaped! i started to pick them up... Some of them looked heart shaped because of shadows... but a lot WERE heart shaped... they were EVERYWHERE!

I didn't want to tell justin... because I thought he'd think I was nuts... but he walked over when I was taking pictures... I told him, and then I picked one up... he said, "Oh my god! you weren't kidding! that is a heart!"

Here's a picture of one of the rocks:

After that there were hearts everywhere... When we drove into to Marfa, we stopped at a Indian gift shop... they had "Worry Stones" the one on top was a red stone in the shape of a heart! I picked it up... it was the only one that was heart shaped... the other ones weren't in any shape...

wow... I asked... and I got my answer.