Big Bend National Park – Page 2

Return to the Bend – Day 3

By Don on Saturday, April 19, 2014

We got word early in the morning that someone had held up the evening stage in Terlingua so we put together a posse to find the culprit and string him up. Unfortunately, our posse leader just took us through an area of old mine tailings, a historical dump and an abandoned golf course. The robber got away.

Awesome horse riding sound and you can hear how impressed I am with the posse leader’s tales of past exploits.

Posse Assistant Joe gave us all some training on how to steer a horse. Yes, I know I pretty much look like Teddy Roosevelt in his Rough Rider days. Joe was on the front porch of the stables working on writing a new song when we pulled up.

Abby had been beside herself for days in anticipation of going riding. The posse organizer made her wear a helmet, but by all indications, she had a great time.

The posse leader (whose name I can’t remember) had a specific order in which we had to ride and the horses were not to pass each other. She didn’t tell us, but we were not to dismount the horses, either. Gramps found out about that secret rule the hard way. That put me behind Abby and I exclusively got shots of her back while she was riding.

I did somehow manage to get a nice horseback portrait of Gramps.

This dog greeted us every morning at the duplex. We took to calling him Morning Dog. Gina liked him so much that when she got home she invented an imaginary dog named scout based on Morning Dog. Except Scout wears a bandanna around his neck.

That evening we went to the Starlight Theater, the hub of the local tourist industry, located at a historic abandoned mining village known as Terlingua Ghost Town. The restaurant/performance hall and associated souvenir store is just funky enough to not scare the tourists away while keeping the locals coming back.

The place has a few works by local artists for sale.

This is a confusing situation because a couple days later in the town of Lajitas we saw a live goat in a pen with a sign proclaiming it as “Clay Henry the mayor of Lajitas”. Some research reveals that this is the original Clay Henry and he’s had an interesting go of it in both life and death.

I don’t know this duo’s name, but I saw the guitar player playing a coffee can on the front porch of the store on our first day in town. He must really love music.

I had a filet with some sort of demi glace and mashed potatoes and a locally brewed beer. I gave the meal the extremely rare Golden FPW. It was that good.

Terlingua seems to have a certain type of dog – very laid back, but looking like they are very experienced. I’m sure they all have tangled with a skunk or two and rolled around in the carcass of a road-killed deer and narrowly escaped a rattlesnake bite. See that our-of-focus guitar player in the background? That’s Joe from the posse mentioned earlier. He said he had played his new song and had gotten compliments on it. I’m sorry I missed it.

Behind the store and restaurant in the ghost town proper, there’s an old Catholic church that is still in use. It’s got great details.

A minute before I took this shot the entire sky was on fire. I was too busy jacking around and missed it.

Big Bend National Park exploring Family Fun Hiking Photography Vacation

Return to the Bend – Day 2

By Don on Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Our second day in the desert got off to an inauspicious start. We made the long drive over to Dagger Flat in hopes that a sea of yucca would be in full magnificent bloom. We’d seen many yuccas blooming in some areas of the park so I had high hopes. After a jouncey seven-mile drive on a dirt track we broke through into the flat and ….. nothing. The big bloom hadn’t started yet. So it was back to the drawing board. We headed over to the Grapevine Hills to hike the short trail through a geologic wonderland. Nana and Gramps had other plans so we didn’t catch up with them until later. It being midday, the light was harsh so the photography wasn’t that great.

The little mountain range is the remains of an eroded igneous intrusion. It’s littered with all manner of red flaky boulders. The first mile was a nice stroll on a well-beaten, flat path, but the final quarter mile was a pretty decent climb. In the warmer parts of the year the little valley is probably a furnace, but we had a nice day with temps in the lower 80s. The area looks like a classic place for the hero in a cowboy picture to get trapped by wild Comanches. Abby was dying to see some javelinas and she finally got her chance. They were sneaking around in the brush around a spring so I couldn’t get a picture.

Abby used her binoculars to watch for Indians. Note how she leaned up against a rock to keep from sky-lining herself and becoming an easy target. Louis L’Amour would have been proud.

The payoff at the end of the trail is this balancing rock situation and a magnificent view of the untrammeled desert beyond.

The ocotillo or Devil’s buggy whip was putting on a show across the park. A veritable forest of the thorny plants grows near the west entrance to the park. I went out there at sunset hoping to get a great sunset I could silhouette the branches and flowers against. The sunset was a dud so I did the best I could. The wind was blowing hard, causing the stems to sway and blurring most of the flowers. Right at dark a bunch of humming birds descended on flowers, so that was pretty neat.

Big Bend National Park Family Fun Photography Vacation

Return To The Bend – Day 1

By Don on Sunday, April 13, 2014

Things got weird there for a bit, but we finally pulled a the trigger on a return trip to Big Bend National Park for this year’s Spring Break. I’ve been to Big Bend 4 times now. Gina has been 3 and this was Abby’s first trip. All the previous trips involved camping for multiple nights inside the park. This time we decided to go the radical route of staying in some sort of fixed lodging in Terlingua, a tiny town just outside the the western entrance to the park.

I found this weird sign draped over a pile of junk in Grandfalls, Texas. A tiny burg a couple of hours north of the park.

Gina somehow discovered the duplexes offered by the Chisos Mining Company. We were placed in the Mesa View unit on the outskirts of town. My Mom and Dad rented the other side of the duplex. The place was fantastic. A bedroom, bath, kitchen and sitting area. Plenty big, quiet and way more comfortable than camping even in Daisy. I recommend the place, but don’t go thinking it’s going to be like the condo you always rent at the beach on the Redneck Riviera. CMC also offers traditional motel rooms along with small cabins in an area they call Easter Egg Valley. We didn’t go inside any of those, but based on how they look from outside, I’d avoid relying on them for your lodging needs.

The pastel colors are a thing with the CMC properties.

Needing to kill some time until Nana and Gramps rolled into town, we headed up to the Terlingua Ghost Town to check out the famous pickin’ porch. Stand by for more on this quaint tourist draw in a later post.

We got soon got word that Nana and Gramps were running later than expected so we headed into the park and down to the trail that runs into the downstream end of Santa Elena Canyon. The canyon is one of three seriously deep canyons inside the park carved by the Rio Grande. The walls at the exit of the canyon are 1,500 feet tall from the river.

From the end of the canyon the river heads out across the Chihuahuan Desert.

We finished off the day watching a magnificent sunset.

Big Bend National Park Photography Texas Vacation

The Bend! Day 4: Crossing The Rubicon

By Don on Thursday, April 8, 2010

I’ll admit that I’m not much of camper. I love going out into the wilderness and rambling around and I’ll camp out if that’s the only way I’ll be able to visit some places, but I don’t like it. The whole camping thing is just such a hassle. Screwing with ice chests and camp stoves and flashlights and cooking outdoors and not bathing and participating in different bathroom routines is all bothersome but not really that big a deal. The thing that gets me is the tent. First you have to put the damn thing up and arrange some kind of bedding. Then you have to hope it doesn’t rain (admittedly not a great danger in the desert). Then to get up to pee in the middle of the night you have to use to the preternaturally loud zipper, which wakes up your tentmate(s) and possibly other nearby campers. And, if you’re in a campground, to pee in the night you have to put on pants and shoes and walk to the restroom. In addition, there’s the dish washing in cold water and the constant not being able to find things. Eventually you have to take down the tent and put up the bedding. It just sucks.

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Big Bend National Park Photography Texas Vacation

The Bend! Day 3: ¡Viva Terlingua!

By Don on Friday, April 2, 2010

We got all rested up on Day 2 and we were ready to tackle some more desert hiking on Day 3 (or at least I was). We planned to meet Dale and Amber at 8 a.m. at the Pine Canyon trail head, but we got off to a late start after another rough night in the tent. A gale blew up and pummeled our cheapo Wal-Mart tent for hours. If you’ve never slept in a tent with a 35 mph wind blowing then you haven’t lived, my friend. I finally went to sleep around 1 a.m. and Gina was awake until the wind calmed down sometime around 3. Plus we had to take down our tent and pack up because checkout of the campsite was at noon. So we showed up at the trail a little over an hour late. Luckily Dale and Amber got there only about 30 minutes before we did and were inclined to wait for us. There’s very little cellular reception in the park, so we couldn’t communicate with each other. We were all going on plans we’d made the last time we saw each other two days earlier.

Big Bend National Park Hiking Photography Texas Vacation

The Bend! Day 2: Chasing The Sunset

By Don on Thursday, April 1, 2010

I had another long hike planned for the second day at Big Bend National Park, but the hike the afternoon before wore Gina and me out pretty good. Plus we had some inconsiderate campers in the site next to ours and they were whooping it up late into the night. At about 11 p.m. they were talking loudly about the cobbler they were cooking in a Dutch oven. Only about 15 yards separated them from the nearest other campers – us, and several other campsite were close by, but they acted as if they were 100 miles from other people. A little bit of excitement ensued earlier in the evening when a skunk invaded their campsite. To top it all off, they started being loud at about daylight. So they were the last thing we heard before going to sleep and the first thing we heard upon waking up.

We decided to scrap any plans for strenuous hiking for the day and instead went for drive on the west side of the park to see what we could see.

Big Bend National Park Hiking Photography Texas Vacation

The Bend!

By Don on Tuesday, March 30, 2010

It only took 14 years, but I finally talked Gina into returning to Big Bend National Park for a camping trip. Her first trip, in 1996, got off to a shaky start when we rolled into the campground and the thermometer at the little store showed 114 degrees. In hindsight, it’s clear that visiting the desert during the last week of May is a bad idea if you’re not a big fan of heat. Then there was the fact that we went there in my little Ford Ranger that didn’t have air conditioning. Then there was the late-night incident with the javelina. Then there was the sandstorm that blew in and drove tiny grains of sand through the tent fabric, coating us in grit. We cut the trip short after three days and fled back to comparatively mild Little Rock.

This time, with a March trip planned, the weather promised to be much more reasonable and it was. It was even pretty chilly during the nights. Granted, I haven’t been many places in my life, but Big Bend is the most beautiful, scenic and downright neatest place I’ve ever been. This trip was my third to the park. I shot about 500 pictures and have picked out about 40 to put on the blog, so I’m going to dole them out over the next few days as I find time to get the photos processed. If you want to stretch you’re imagination, you can pretend I’m doing these entries in real time even though the trip was actually last week. I recommend you do that.