Even though we left Big Bend, we still weren’t done with Texas! We drove northwest to Balmorhea to visit Balmorhea State Park. It was a tiny town, but the state park was pretty great. It’s a large spring (San Solomon Spring) that bubbles up from an aquifer. The aquifer is filled by run-off from the Davis Mountains about 100 miles away.
There is a pool built around the springs that gush over 15 million gallons of water per day. We got to swim in the pool. Even though you can just walk in, we all decided to jump off the 10 foot diving board at one end of the pool. The water is super clear and there are shallower areas with concrete bottoms, and then 20-25 foot deep areas with natural bottoms. We saw tons of fish, several turtles, and scuba divers! A really unique experience – especially in the middle of west Texas.
After swimming we drove northwest again towards Hueco Tanks State Park. (Huecos are gaps and hollows in the rock that collect and hold rainwater (tanks) in a very dry area.)
We arrived at our campground near the park around sunset. It was an adventure figuring out where our site was, but we finally made it.
The next morning we went into the park to explore. Hueco Tanks is known for its world class bouldering, but since we don’t do a lot of bouldering, we decided to find Kiva cave in the park. Kiva cave was a cave used long ago by Native Americans in the area. To find it, a park staff told us to leave the trail at a certain picnic area and go up to the right until we saw a duck rock. Then to look for an alligator rock up to the right of that. The cave was around there. She nonchalantly mentioned that it sometimes took people house to find the cave entrance if they’ve never been there.
Well, it seemed that luck was on our side. It did take some adventuring, but after putting all the pieces together, we found the cave in about 20 minutes! Inside we saw some amazing petroglyphs and some more exploring. Really cool. We were glad we stopped there, even if we weren’t taking advantage of the world class bouldering.
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