Humongouscasheaglebagel - Desert-Landscapes-Whatever

Spotted this rock rattler in of all places—the rocks! Of course there’s plenty of rocks in Big Bend. Enough to satisfy the most discriminating rattlesnake. He didn’t look like he wanted to chat so I just snapped a picture & bid him adieu. I’ve come across many snakes in the backcountry. They don’t want to bite you any more than you want to bite them.

From the Sierra del Carmen range in Mexico, mines extracted lead, zinc, and silver starting in the 1890s. In 1910, a 6-mile tramway was built across the Rio Grande to present-day Big Bend National Park, where the ore was unloaded from the iron buckets and freighted by mule-drawn cart to the railroad in Marathon. You can see the ruins of the tramway towers’ concrete footings on the riverbank, and the popular Old Ore Road through the Big Bend backcountry. The iron buckets can also often be seen.

Not to be confused with the Dog Canyon in Guadalupe Mts. NP, also in Texas