#2: [15-Nov-03]

19-Mar-2001 -- Quite honestly when I anticipated a vacation to west Texas I expected miles of open rangeland and prairie, and easy jogs to various confluence points. Not! After being in west Texas for several days and seeing hundreds of miles of locked gates, barbed wire, and "no trespassing signs" in the remotest corners of Brewster and Val Verde County, I was beginning to have serious doubts that all of this private ownership of vast expanses of remote land actually benefited public welfare. Big Bend National Park seems like the proverbial bone thrown to us to appease our thirst for open space!

This particular confluence point is was no exception, two miles off the main highway behind an endless barbed wire fence. Future visitors will likely have to either find the legitimate owner or scale the fence and enduring an all-afternoon traverse through rugged terrain and thorny vegetation. The photograph shown here was taken at the point of closest approach, 1.76 miles from U.S. 90 looking northeast.