It rained overnight in Terlingua and we rolled out of town at dawn and shortly drove into an ice storm. It was pretty surreal to the desert coated in ice and the driving was a little nerve wracking, but it turned out that the ground was just warm enough to keep the ice from coating the highways. We finally drove out of the ice near Abilene.
Our last full day in Big Bend was mostly a leisurely ramble along the Ross Maxwell scenic drive visiting the various easily accessible sites. First up was the remnants of the Sam Nail ranch where this derelict windmill stands in a photogenic pose. Pictures of it are all over the Internets and in thousands of tourist photo albums.
One of the big highlights of our latest Big Bend trip was making the famous jaunt across the Rio Grande to Boquillas, Mexico. I made this trip way back in 1992 when all you needed was a wad of small-denomination American bills to pay the boatman and the burro keeper. The border at the river was lightly enforced and folks living along the river in both countries could travel a few miles on either side without hassle. Nowadays, post 9/11 and amid Mexican-immigrant hysteria, you have to have a passport and obey the hours of operation. If you aren’t back across the river by 5 p.m. you’re stuck in Mexico until the next day.
After spending the night in downtown Ft. Davis, we hit the only place on in town that served breakfast, according to Google, where I had pretty authentic migas with refried beans. A solid 3 FPWs.
The highlight on Day 4 was a trip to Ft. Davis, Texas, to the McDonald Observatory for a star party. Star parties happen in the pitch dark so no photos from it. On our way out of the park we stopped off at the Stilwell Store to eat lunch and check out the museum. I was last at the Stillwell Store in 1992. Nothing had changed. It’s named for the Stillwell family who lived and ranched at the site for nearly a hundred years.
The museum is pretty much a monument to Hallie Stillwell and her husband. Hallie carried on at the ranch and store after her husband died and became a West Texas legend. She died in 1997 at the age of 99.
We had one pretty epic hike planned. A seven miler up into the high Chisos Mountains to Laguna Meadow. We woke up early to freezing temps. The leaky ice maker outside our cottage had created a slick spot of ice on the sidewalk. Gramps made the half mile walk from his accommodations to meet us and we headed out. Around 1,600 feet of elevation gain awaited us.
Although it was late November, the leaf change had just gotten going in earnest. The mountains are an interesting mix of desert and forest. Among the cactus and agave are ponderosa pine and oak trees and other plants commonly found farther north in the West. Although we didn’t get to them on this hike, the Chisos Mountains are home to southernmost stand of aspen in the U.S.
A couple hours in we stopped for a longish break for a midmorning snack. Gina, being some kind of bird whisperer, started throwing bits of peanut butter crackers on the ground and small flock of Mexican jays swooped out of the mountains and started chowing down. They nearly ate out of our hands.
We lined up for a group photo after our snack. We should’ve stood closer to the camera.
Gramps recommends climbing trees whenever possible. Especially when you’re 4 miles up a mountain in one of the most remote areas of the country with no real hope of timely medical intervention should you fall and crack open your skull.
We did a lot of lolly gagging so it took us about 4 hours to get to Laguna Meadow. We thought it was pretty funny that there was a weird pit toilet up there. The trail gets a lot of traffic. Many, many groups of hikers passed us on the way up. Most were headed to the South Rim of the Chisos to camp for the night. Some groups planned to make a day trip out of the 13 mile round trip South Rim hike. We saw a man and woman in basically street clothes who said they were doing that. The woman had one of those mesh backpack purse things with the strings for straps with 2 bottles of water in it. I imagine they wanted to kill each other when they got finished.
On the way back, just as the trail started downhill, Gramps broke off and scrambled up the southern peak of Ward Mountain. I soon followed him up there and got what must be the second best view of the Basin.
Views of Casa Grande from Ward Mountain. The top of Casa Grande is the best view of the Basin.
We paused in the howling wind atop the mountain to take a bunch of photos.
Gramps, ala Vanna White, pointing out Emory Peak, the highest point in the Chisos.
Gramps isn’t afraid to do what it takes to get the shot.
One of my favorite things to do in Big Bend NP is to hit the visitor center in the Basin and check out the map of recent bear and mountain lion sightings. It’s hard to make out in the photo, but there were two sightings of a group of three mighty pumas at Laguna Meadow the week before our hike.
The hike took way longer than any of us expected. Gramps thought we’d be back around noon. It was closer to 4 p.m. We were starving and looking forward to eating at the Starlight Theater outside the park in Terlingua Ghost Town. The ghost town is small area of ruins from the area’s mining days with a big gift shop, bed and breakfast accommodations and a few restaurants. It’s always packed with tourists and locals having a big time. The waits are long for the restaurant but there’s enough to do that you don’t really notice.
Day of the Dead items are a big component of the souvenirs at the gift shop.
We kicked off our first full day in glorious Big Bend by taking a drive down the River Road, a Texas-famous stretch of highway along the Rio Grande. It starts in Terlingua and runs 60 miles or so to Presido. Our first stop was the tiny berg of Lajitas to visit the town’s mayor, Clay Henry. Clay is a goat. Several Clay Henrys have held the mayoralty. The folks in Lajita have many colorful stories about Clay’s hard-drinking ways.
We stopped for lunch at the general store in Lajitas and I had the best sandwich I’ve ever had anywhere anytime. Pastrami on sourdough. It was decadent offering.
A few miles up the road we stopped to check out the river and see the remains of the movie set Contrabando. Only one building remains out of the six or seven built 20 years ago. Just facades and shells with nothing on the inside, they were apparently flood damaged and falling in and were destroyed for safety reasons. I got a good photo of the church the last time we visited.
Not a lot to see so we just took some pictures of each other and moved up the road.
We stopped at the rim of Colorado Canyon just as a guided group of young people rolled up. The spot was featured in the movie “Fandango” in the scene where Kevin Costner digs up a bottle of champagne from under a rock with D-O-M scratched into it. The rock and the inscription are still there. The guide was super enthusiastic about showing his group the rock. They were many and loud and climbing all over the place.
The River Road twisting away across the desert.
We eventually stopped at Closed Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park for a short late-afternoon hike. Closed Canyon is a classic slot canyon affair that is quite quite a bit narrower than it is deep.
The canyon acts as an open-air drain to the Rio Grande for a closed in valley separated from the river by a high ridge. The water must really roar through there when it rains in the right spot.
Like the slots in Arizona, the canyon features a series of progressively higher pour overs. Gina and I hung back while Abby and I continued down as far as we dared. We finally got to a drop that we thought would be hard for Abby to ascend, so we turned around.
I got her to make a rare pose for me at the top of the pour over.
I talked Gina into going to Big Bend National Park in 1996 and it was so hot and miserable it took 14 years to convince her to return. Now I can’t keep her away from the place. We returned for the third time since that ill-fated mid-90’s trip over the week of Thanksgiving. After the 10-day trip we declared it our best vacation of all-time. (When I say “we” I mean Gina and me. Abby thinks our trip earlier this year to Universal Studios in Orlando has been the best vacation.) We even convinced Nana and Gramps to tag along with us.
I rented a fisheye lens for the trip and I thought it would be funny to break it in with a fish-face portrait. I was impressed with how Abby is really selling it.
We stopped off in Marathon, Texas, for lunch at a classic roadside diner-type establishment.
A couple of actual working cowboys came in and sat at the next table. They ordered iced coffee.
We booked three nights in the Chisos Mountain Lodge inside the park. The rest of the trip would be spent in a couple other places outside the park.
The building in which our room was located was built in the early 40s and it is clearly showing its age, but it’s all about location, right? We were right in the heart of the action and the surroundings were very peaceful. We hardly saw any of the other people staying all around us.
That evening we walked to supper at the lodge restaurant with a nearly full moon rising over the mighty 7,500 foot Casa Grande.
For our last day in Big Bend we went on sort of an aimless ramble over to Lajitas and drove a short distance down the River Road in Big Bend Ranch State Park. We came across the “ghost town” of Contrabando, which is actually a defunct movie set. We had the place all to ourselves. This church facade is probably the most interesting building there. The town sits right on the bank of the Rio Grande and if you stop for moment and let the atmosphere settle around you it really feels like the border circa 1880.
This might be the greatest sign ever. It sits on the outskirts of Terlingua on the road to the west entrance of Big Bend National Park. I mean, you can’t beat free water and hundreds of wind chimes. I imagine the person who painted it spent awhile planning out where they would place each come on for maximum effect. Then they started at the top left and after maybe a whole day of painting finally finished at the bottom right. Then when they finished the job and stood back to admire it, reading from top to bottom, sighed deeply and said, “Screw it. I’m not fixing it. Spell check wouldn’t have even caught it.” I’m sure they’ve endured endless ribbing from the other townfolk.
Late that afternoon I went back to the Terlingua Ghost Town hoping to catch a magnificent sunset over the cemetery. The ghost town is full of roofless abandoned adobe buildings. My awe-inspiring sunset was a no-show again, but I did get to make more sunburst effects as it went down.
Many of the cemetery’s graves are elaborately decorated with figurines, flags, money, beads, and empty alcoholic-drink containers.
With the sunset a bust a searched around looking for anything eye catching. Nearly every grave played host to clear glass jars used to hold candles. Just before I lost the light I noticed how the jars glowed in the golden rays of the fading sun. I then frantically scrambled around looking for the most photogenic jar. I thought this one fit the bill nicely.
We kicked off the morning by making the short hike into Boquillas Canyon fully expecting to see Victor The Singing Mexican standing on the far bank crooning something in Spanish. Instead we found Jesus The Singing Mexican on the American side setting out his trinkets for sale to the tourists.
Just across the river is the tiny village of Boquillas del Carmen, which was once a must-visit destination for Big Benders. Tourists would board a flat-bottomed boat to be ferried over to a burro wrangler in Mexico. A short burro ride later, the tourists would drink and eat and shop in a pretty authentic desert village. Robert Earl Keen even wrote a great song about the whole thing.
Here I am in full mullettude back in 1992 when I made the crossing with my dad, my uncle and cousin. My dad is the guy directly behind the pirate. See that colorful hat on the boat captain’s head? Dad would shortly trade his Nick Nolte Extreme Prejudice style cowboy hat for it. After the events of my 32nd birthday the government clamped the border shut and, since Boquillas is literally in the middle of nowhere, the little town just about died. A few hardy souls like Victor hung on and would daily sneak across the border and put out a few wares to get some much-needed cash flow into the village. I don’t think the authorities worried much about these people causing trouble.
Last year the border crossing was finally reopened in an effort to restore a fun tourist experience and to help out the people of Boquillas. It doesn’t really have that scruffy feel anymore because you have to have a passport and go through customs. We didn’t plan far enough ahead to get passports so we didn’t make the river crossing. Despite the border crossing being open, many people still cross the river from Boquillas to sell their handicrafts. Life is hard down on the border so I won’t pile on about this merchant’s abuse of the apostrophe s.
Jesus told us that Victor had taken his show back to Boquillas, leaving him with the gig.
I had a thing for dogs there for a couple of days. This one had just swum the Rio Grande and he stopped to pose while his owner set up shop along the trail.
We didn’t really go to Big Bend. I shot all the photos at home using a green screen.
After leaving the Rio Grande Village area, we headed up into the Chisos Basin to grab some lunch and hike the Lost Mine Trail. Gina and I hiked this trail back in 1996 and I didn’t remember it being all that strenuous despite it’s being very uphill. I guess my memory is faulty, because it was pretty tough. Abby and Gina made it without a single complaint, though. (I need a sarcasm mark for the end of that sentence.) We hit right during the middle of the day and the sun was just too sunny for good photography.
The trail tops out after 2.75 miles and 1,200 feet of elevation gain right on a narrow ridge separating two canyons that lead out of the mountains and into the desert. At roughly 7,000 feet elevation the views south toward Mexico are pretty spectacular. This photo is view of Casa Grande to the northwest. This was the beginning of a short love affair with that sunburst effect. Going back down was much easier, but still it was 5.5 miles. The longest hike Abby has ever made. And, despite her insistence to the contrary on the way up, it didn’t kill her.
These last are both views of Pine Canyon and the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains. They look pretty terrible in color, but I think black and white captured the moment so nicely.
When we got back to the car, I had a particular sunset photo in mind, but it was too late when I got the location. But I did find a fellow nearby shooting the sunset with a 4×5 large-format-film camera, Ansel Adams style. He graciously arranged his rig so that I could get a shot of what he was seeing on his ground glass.