Family Fun – Post Irony

Big Bend Thanksgiving – Day 2

By Don on Sunday, November 22, 2015

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.

Family Fun

The Big D

By Don on Monday, April 27, 2015

Gina is a big fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories and when she found out that the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas was hosting a a big interactive Sherlock exhibit, well, she just had to go. The museum has a lot of other stuff to do, like extract wheat DNA in the hands-on lab.

Arkansas Family Fun Waterfall

Ramblin’

By Don on Friday, April 3, 2015

We’ve been on a couple of our patented family walkabouts that Abby professes to hate, but actually loves. We wandered around Petit Jean State Park back in February and stopped by the abandoned Carden Bottoms school on the northwest side of Petit Jean Mountain. It’s evidently a popular place for those into abandoned stuff. It does have a few interesting features, like this abused piano.

We’ve been getting some good rain in the late winter and the waterfalls have been pretty spectacular. We hit Glory Hole Falls in mid-March and stopped long enough for a family portrait.

A week before I headed out on a solo trek and stopped by Car Wash Falls on the banks of the Big Piney in northern Johnson County.

Family Fun

Kitchen Crashers

By Don on Sunday, January 18, 2015

The great kitchen remodel of 2015 commenced today.

Christmas Family Fun

It’s Christmas Time In The City

By Don on Thursday, January 1, 2015

Christmas happened again. We lined up for the annual family Christmas portrait. We went without the wacky hats this year for some reason.

Christmas Day commenced with the usual embarrassment of riches shared with Gina’s Mom and Dad.

That afternoon we went over the river and through the woods to Nana and Gramps’ where Abby procured the iPod that we can’t pry out of her hands.

Christmas Family Fun

O Christmas Tree

By Don on Friday, December 19, 2014

I think this is just the greatest thing. Watch it in HD and kill the little pop-up ads.

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.

Christmas family Family Fun

Merry Christmas E’rbody

By Don on Wednesday, December 25, 2013

The highlights of the annual family Christmas portrait in front of the tree.

Arkansas Devil's Den fall foliage Family Fun

Speak Of The Devil

By Don on Thursday, November 7, 2013

An extended contingent of the Dailey family trucked up to Devil’s Den State Park for a camping trip and general fall frolic. We had three campers involved and my parents rented one of the rustic CCC cabins. The fall colors were blazing, but with all the visiting going on I didn’t get to really shoot many pictures. I did get one decent photo one morning as the sun rose above the mountain.