Mountain biking on the Rio Grande

Here is a great story about two guys mountain biking along the Rio Grande.  Due to homeland security you probably would not be able to pull off this type of adventure today.

http://users.hal-pc.org/~lfa/KB01.html

There are a few photos of the adventure and some great stories about the hospitality of the people who live along the Rio Grande.

Near the town of Valentine is a huge ranch owned by the Miller family for the last few generations.  They are nice enough to open their property up to the public a few times a year.  Here is the next opportunity to visit the Miller Ranch and learn about some of the plants that are native in the area.

September 12- Botanizing on the Miller Ranch, Valentine L.C. Hinckley was a renowned botanist and chairman of the Department of Biology at Sul Ross for many years. Between 1941 and 1947 he studied the vegetation of the Clay Espy Miller Ranch in the Sierra Vieja Mountain Range and produced a plant list. Hinckley has been honored by having many West Texas plant species named for him. The Mountain Range that parallels the Rio Grande has four deeply eroded canyons and on the north and east contains pinion juniper woodlands and good grasslands where the western sides consist largely of desert scrub. There is a permanent stream in ZH Canyon with riparian vegetation. Patty Manning will guide our field trip and teach plant identification using the Hinckley report as a tool. The cutoff from Hwy. 90 to the ranch road is ¾ mile past Valentine, just before the Prada building. We will carpool for 11 miles on dirt road, following the fence over two cattle guards and through the Chilicote Gate. Bring a lunch to eat after we climb to the spring. Carpool from Alpine, Marfa and Fort Davis, times TBA.

To find out more on The Native Plant Society of Texas, Big Bend Chapter log on below:

http://www.npsot.org/BigBend/programs.html

Enjoy, Derrick

When I am not working as a videographer I try to make it out to my land near Valentine, Texas. Here is a little video clip from my July trip out to the land. We had lots of rain and were afraid we were going to be stuck there for a few days. Lucky for us the sun broke out and gave us a small window of opportunity to get out of the valley. All in all we had a blast while out in the middle of no where.

Enjoy our little video clip,
Derrick Perrin

There is a new geocache in the area.  This is just one more reason for people to visit the Chispa Road.  You can view the cache at:  http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=16134d32-2f83-4317-b417-fa1da03f97b9

For more information on what geocaching is visit.  www.Geocaching.com

Take Care

Derrick Perrin

I just uploaded a bunch of photos from the last trip out west.  Take a look if you like.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28077113@N03/sets/72157606338893495/

Thanks

Derrick Perrin

While on a quick trip to my ten acres in West Texas my buddies and I decided to hike around the land.  Our first destination was the  Baldy Tank on the USGS Ninetysix Ranch Quad.  We reached the site and were dissapointed.  There was no water.  In the last few satalite images they showed the area tanks to be filled with water.  We hiked over the damn and found the trees to be nice and health around the rim of the tank but no signs of standing watter.

Baldy Tank

After hiking to the tank we continued on our 5 mile round trip.  We were looking to make it to the North Rim but did not make it this trip.  We will try again soon.

Thanks

Derrick Perrin

It was a quick trip but I made it out to West Texas this past weekend.  Along with me was Mando, Ben, and Riley my dog.  We had a good time and almost had to stay an extra day due to being flooded onto the property.  The land is mostly rock but the creek washes are Benoite clay.  The clay is nasty when it is wet.  There is a section further south on the Chispa Road known as the bog.  The bog is konwn to eat cars.

Our land is located a few miles east of the Chispa Road.  It is part of the W.J. Cathey 1009 Survey.  I will post a lot of pictures later but here are a few.  We had a good time hiking and finding a safe way out of the property.

This creek runs just west of our property

Creek on land

PVC Shelter

Thanks

Derrick Perrin

Here is a bit more information on the

San Carlos Formation on the Coal Mine Ranch in Presidio County.  It is faulted up and it is not easy to get the coal out but here is some of the specs on the area.

Coal Rank – there are two diferrent levels of coal in the area.

Bituminos – The most plentiful form of coal in the United States, bituminous coal is used primarily to generate electricity and make coke for the steel industry. The fastest growing market for coal, though still a small one, is supplying heat for industrial processes. Bituminous coal has a carbon content ranging from 45 to 86 percent carbon and a heat value of 10,500 to 15,500 BTUs-per-pound.

&

Subbituminous – Ranking below bituminous is sub-bituminous coal with 35-45 percent carbon content and a heat value between 8,300 and 13,000 BTUs-per-pound. Reserves are located mainly in a half-dozen Western states and Alaska. Although its heat value is lower, this coal generally has a lower sulfur content than other types, which makes it attractive for use because it is cleaner burning.

Age of formation – Geologic Age

Upper Cretaceous – In geological time, the last period of the Mesozoic Era, preceded by the Jurassic Period and followed by the Tertiary Period. The rocks formed during Cretaceous time constitute the Cretaceous System. Omalius d’Halloys first recognized the widespread chalks of Europe as a stratigraphic unit. W. O. Conybeare and W. Phillips (1822) formally established the period, noting that whereas chalks were remarkably widespread deposits at this time, the Cretaceous System includes rocks of all sorts and its ultimate basis for recognition must lie in its fossil remains. See also Chalk; Fossil; Jurassic; Rock age determination; Stratigraphy.

The Coal Mine Ranch in West Texas actually has coal.  An old mine researcher at the Chihuahua Desert Research institute said the coal quality is really good.  The bad news is the coal is faulted up and is not economically feasible to mine.  The Coal is located in a formation called the San Carlos Formation.

Here is a posting from a page I found online.  If you want more information you can order the entire article from their page:  This is a repost from the site: http://search.datapages.com/data/doi/10.1306/A1ADF309-0DFE-11D7-8641000102C1865D

DOI: 10.1306/A1ADF309-0DFE-11D7-8641000102C1865D
GCAGS Transactions
Volume 18 (1968)

ABSTRACT

Upper Cretaceous rocks in west Texas and northeastern Chihuahua, Mexico, are divided into three formations, the Ojinaga Formatios, the San Carlos Formation, the El Picacho Formation.

A quantitive zonation based on morphologic changes in stratigraphically successive Placenticeras samples is proposed in order to supplement the established Upper Cretaceous collignonicerid zonation. The correlation coefficients of eight stratigraphically unrelated samples are statistically compared with the established Placenticeras evolutionary sequence and time correlations are made.

The results of the biostratigraphic analysis suggest that the Senonian strandline is Presidio and Jeff Davis Counties, Texas, and northeastern Chihuahua moved in a southeasterly direction during an extensive marine regression.

If you are wanting to know something about Texas a good place to start is the The Handbook of Texas Online.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/index.html

They do a pretty good job of listing a lot of history.  And if it is not enough information for you you can always use it as a place to start your search.

Thanks

Derrick Perrin