We visited Great Smoky Mountain National Park for a few days. Stayed in a sweet cabin near Gatlinburg, hiked a few miles, touristed a bit and went to Dollywood.
We disappointed Abby back in 2011 when we went to New York City, so we somehow promised her we’d take her there on her 10th birthday. So that’s what we did.
I make maps for a living so I thought it would be cool to figure out how to make a web map showing geotagged photos from the trip. I had to learn a bunch of new coding stuff, but I was able to come up with a basic map-and-photos deal.
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.
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.
We made our second trip of the year to Florida (see the documentation on our first trip.) This time we hit Gulf Shores, Ala., to do some beachin’.
The first beach trip Gina and I ever made was to Gulf Shores many years ago, but we hadn’t been back since. We have been to Pensacola and Destin a few times each and have always stayed in a regular hotel or one of those high-rise condo monstrosities. For this trip we decided we wanted to try the beach house route. Gina found The Green Heron House on a canal in the heart of Gulf Shores. It was small but quite adequate for our needs.
The house’s namesake patrolling the canal behind the house.
Being a map guy, I enjoyed that the owners had hung up a couple of historical maps of the Alabama gulf coast.
We ate a ton of great food. I remember not being impressed with Gulf Shores’ restaurant options, but this trip was pretty stellar. We discovered that the best eateries were so close by that we could get takeout, avoid the long wait, and still get back to the house with hot food. So we did that several times. S&S Seafood, which is just a takeout joint, not a restaurant, was a great find.
One day we drove over to Pensacola to tour the haunted lighthouse and eat at Crabs We Got ‘Em.
We went a little crazy one day and signed up for the local zip line madness. It was a lot of fun and pretty scary at first. We were pretty impressed that Abby just jumped off the edge of the first tower with zero hesitation.
At one of the stations we were told we needed to go down backwards with our legs propped up in the safety lines in the “torpedo position” because the headwinds would prevent us from reaching the landing area if we went in the front-facing configuration. That was a thrill. All the zip line pics except this one were shot by the venue’s staff photographer.
We capped it all off with a little night crabbing and family beach portraiture.
