Big Bend Summer 2009 – Day 3
We awoke to a cloudy with some light rain and heavy overcast in the Chisos and decided to hike the desert while the weather kept the temperature down.
It was our plan to park on the Burro Spring Pouroff Rd. and hike west to Burro Spring, and continue on to Tule Spring and check out the ruins at that site. We hiked in a wash SW around Pt. 3663 and the cut NW between some low hills and Pt 3663 until we reached the lower section of Burro Spring. The area just below the spring thwarted our approach to the pouroff at the head of the draw as it was heavily overgrown. Lots of cottonwoods were in sharp contrast to a very large barrel cactus (species unknown…someone chime in).
This Cactus was over 2 ft tall and was about 14″ in diameter.
We headed SW out of the canyon and followed flowing water to the desert and worked our way WNW toward Tule Spring.
After about 1 1/2 miles of wash and xcountry travel, we arrived at the pond that marks the terminus of Tule Spring. The pond is about 1/8 acre shallow pond with a earthen dike to contain it and it lies just downhill from the source of it’s water…Tule Spring.
Next to the spring is an old corral and a single room rock house in poor condition.
Around the house were the remnants of the previous human inhabitants…cans, glass, buckets and quite a few broken horseshoes.
We explored this house for some time and then headed south about 200 yds where there was a smaller rock house, just across a small draw.
This house, while small was in better condition and also held treasure…..one man’s junk is anothers treasure.
We found bowls, bottles, cans, a rifle cartridge, and an unknown metal “thing” that was clealy marked Buck’s Beauty???
One small scorpion made its home in the debris.
It was time to head back, so we headed South to intersect a wash that we could follow back to our starting point. After about 2/10 mile I was startled by the loud rattle of a W. diamondback about 4′ long, with a bad disposition.
With this guy in our memory, we were more comfortable once we re-entered the wash and had a little better visibilty ahead of where we were walking. The hike back to the road was uneventful but enjoyable as it never got too hot. We arrived back to my truck about 13:30 hrs – Total distance 6.0 miles as Big Bend Summer 2009 – Day 3 came to an end.