Travel Update 21

This week started out in Big Bend National Park, where we met a few people who we've run into before during our travels. The first was a couple from Virginia in a white travel van. We didn't get a chance to talk to them, but they let us know that they recognized us. The second was a woman from Washington, also in a white travel van, with a bus-like door. We ran into her shortly on the Natches Trace Parkway at the Merryweather Lewis Memorial. It's fun to recognize the same vehicles and to be recognized. Hopefully we'll run into some more repeats along the way and get to share some stories.

From Big Bend, we headed north towards our next two parks. We stopped at another roadside picnic area on the way up. The next day, we went and gathered a bunch of park info from both Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns before heading into the town of Carlsbad to watch the Ducks beat Stanford and all but lock up their Pac-12 regular season championship. In that game, Oregon's star player, Sabrina, became the only player in NCAA history (women's or men's) to achieve 2000 points, 1000 assists and 1000 rebounds in her career. We were glad that Carlsbad had a Buffalo Wild Wings for us to catch the game!

In Carlsbad, we spent a couple days catching up on our blog while staying at a campsite just out of town near Avalon Lake.

From there, we spent the two days hiking around the Guadalupe Mountains, followed by a day in Carlsbad Caverns. 

A few new national park stickers on a dirty RV.

On our way out of town, we decided to stay at Brantley Lake State Park. It was only $14 to stay for the night for which we got warm showers and a chance to test out plugging in our RV. Turns out, our RV is not a fan of grid power. The lights were our biggest issue, which seemed to overheat and quickly start smelling like burning. Without the lights on we could stay plugged in for a big before the 12V regulator box started getting warm and smelling like hot dog hair. So, we didn't stay plugged in long. Luckily the campsite was gorgeous.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Our next park up was Guadalupe Mountains in the Northwestern area of Texas, on the boarder with New Mexico. This park has both a lot of opportunities to hike and a lot of history, and we got the opportunity to explore both. 

On Thursday we started by doing some of the hiking. There were a ton of good hiking option but we settled on climbing up to see the highest point in Texas. We almost turned back because we were feeling a little under the weather but we're so glad we didn't. The 3,000 feet of elevation gain over 4.2 miles up the mountain were definitely strenuous. The trail was a little bit scary at times. 

The view was worth fighting through the slight illness and fear. 

Unfortunately Kathleen's shoes have decided they've had about enough of hiking. 

On Friday, we explored the historic aspects of the park. We started with the Frijole Ranch Historical Museum. The museum is housed in an old ranch house that was built by some of the first white settlers in the area who came to ranch cattle. The house was later expanded by the Smith family who came and built an orchard. They also added a school house which doubled as a post office and community gathering area. 

 

Inside the house they also have information about the Mescalero Apache who lived in the area and placed great significance on the mountains, including in their origin story. Nearby parts of the park also served the Butterfield stage coach in 1858. The stagecoach was the first constant form of overland communication linking St. Louis and San Fransisco in 1858 and only ran for 11 months before a safer route opened up to the south.

After learning some of the history we took a short walk up to Smith Spring up the hill. 

We ended our exploration of the park up at McKittrick Canyon, which has been said to be the must beautiful spot in Texas. It was getting late in the day and we were pretty tired so we didn't do the full hike unto the canyon. Instead we contented ourselves with a shorter four mile out and back up the trail to just get a taste of it. 

There is definitely a lot to see in this park as there were tons more hikes that we didn't do. We both thought that coming back to do a backcountry backpacking trip would be a lot of fun, unfortunately since Aiden isn't allowed on most national park trails, now wasn't the time. But we felt like we saw a good amount of the park, and would love to come back in the future. 

Big Bend National Park: Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive

Official NPS Map. Click and zoom in to enlarge for details.

For our third and final day in the park we decided to take on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. The drive is 30 miles total down to the Santa Elena Canyon, and there are a plethora of stops and hikes to check out along the way. Because one of the highlights of the park for some people is the Santa Elena Canyon, we decided to start by driving the whole length of the road and then stop on our way back up.

The Santa Elena canyon hike (red arrow on map) is fairly short but it a little tough, you start by finding your way across a river and then going up and over a rocky pass into the canyon. It is gorgeous though!

The high walls of the Canyon can really make you feel small. 

  

Next we stopped at Dorgan House Trail (orange arrow on map), there was really hardly a hike here at all, mostly a walk out to the remnants of some old farm houses. We wanted to stop here because the ranger at the talk we attended in the Chisos Basin told us about the petrified wood fireplace. It was as cool as we hoped. 

 

Next up was the Castolon Visitor Center (yellow arrow on map). There used to be a historic town in Castalon, however it burnt down in 2019 so they are currently operating out of a temporary structure. There wasn't a lot to see here, so we got our final stamp for the park and moved on.

The trail that we decided we were both the most excited about was the Chimneys Trails (green arrow on map). The trail connects 7 miles through the desert over to a non-paved road. However, the Chimneys themselves are 2.4 miles out and can the hike can be done as an out and back. The trail is relatively flat, but completely in direct sun light and seems like it would be brutal in the summer. 

The Chimneys are very interesting rock structures sticking out of the desert. They were formed by magma seeping into cracks in other rock that has no eroded away, leaving only the mold of the cracks. 

 

The reason we picked this hike though was the ancient Native American art at the base of the rocks. 

 

The trail is also just a nice walk through the desert with great views of local flora and fauna.

 

After this hike we were pretty much ready to be done for the day. We stopped at the Lower Burro Mesa Pouroff trail (blue arrow on map) because it was short 1 mile out and back to get to the bottom of dry waterfall.

 

There is also a Upper Burro Mesa Pouroff trail that will get you to the top of the pouroff and looked very interesting. However that trail was longer, and we were starting to run out of time in the day. It is definitely on our list if we ever come back.

We made one last stop at the Sotol Vista (purple arrow) which looks out across the whole desert. It was lovely at dusk. Several people were setting up to watch the sunset, which promised to be beautiful, but we decided we wanted to keep moving and try to find our pullout before it got dark.

Overall it was a great day and a great way to finish up our time at Big Bend. We had big hopes for Big Bend and it didn't disappoint.

Travel Update 20

We started out the week in Norman, OK, and caught up with Kathleen's old Peace Corps friend, Jessica. Kathleen hadn't seen her since they left Guinea, so it was a great overdue reunion. She generously offered us a place to park and take showers at her mother's house.  That, too, was great.

From there we headed south. We stopped by a little town called Medicine Park in Oklahoma, on recommendation from Jessica's mother. It is a cute little town with the claim to fame of being Oklahoma's first cobblestone community. It was a bit touristy, but super cute.

 

Shortly after Medicine Park, we drove into the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, where we saw our first bison! The park was created to help preserve the bison, the elk and the Texas longhorn cows. Bison were almost entirely extinct in North America, only about 550 left before Yellowstone and this preservation were made. They shipped in 15 bison from the New York zoo to start this herd, which took off and is now thriving. Elk also had to be reintroduced from further north, having been hunted out of the area in the early 1900s. The longhorn were added later and are there to be protected as a herd of historical significance. The preserve also gave us some scenic views.

We drove a ways further before settling in for the night at a beautiful reservoir that had free camping by it.

We drove through West Texas quickly; there isn't much there for travelers. It's mile after mile of flat, dry land with the occasional ranch here and there. We made a quick stop in Midland and Odessa, mostly out of curiosity to see the town of Friday Night Lights, but weren't enticed to stay long.

Our last night before Big Bend National Park was a roadside picnic area about 30 miles north of the park. This picnic area had a few picnic tables and fire pits, but most importantly a lovely backyard.

The rest of the week was spent in Big Bend National Park. Check out our posts of the three main areas of the park we visited: Chisos Basin, the Rio Grande, and the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive (Coming soon...). Here's a small teaser of the scenery of Big Bend.

 

Big Bend National Park: Rio Grande and Boquillas Canyon

On Saturday we were able to get another campsite in our same campground and then headed back down to Panther Junction. We were hoping to start the day by catching the park film, usually one of our favorite parts of the parks, but unfortunately the theater was broken and we were never able to see this one.

Instead we continued on with our day, heading down to the Rio Grande Village section of the park. After taking advantage of their laundry facilities we went on two relatively short hikes. The first one was a nature trail just off of the campground. This hike was only 3/4 of a mile, and it went out over  ponds and then up a small hill on a peninsula sticking out into the Rio Grande. It was a lovely.

We saw lots of wildlife, ranging from road runners to beautiful fish and turtles in the ponds. 

 

The hike did show us how surprisingly small the Rio Grande really is. 

So small in fact that Entrepreneurs from Mexico regularly ride their horses across the river, leaving crafts for tourists to buy by putting money in a jar, and then coming back later to collect their earnings. 

Sadly, the river was not always so small. First, due to diversions for farming irrigation and drinking water the river size was reduced to about 20% of its natural flow. Additionally in recent years the river has been suffering from reduced precipitation and increased evaporation due to climate change. 

There is a boarder crossing to the town of Boquillas where they will take you across the river in a row boat for $5. It sounded fun, and we were tempted by the prospect of some fresh tacos for lunch, but we ran out of time in the day. Maybe next time. 

Town of Boquillas, Mexico

We did find time for another fairly short hike into the Boquillas canyon. 

 

On the way back to Panther Junction we did one more easy hike at a location called dugout wells. This hike had signs along the way telling us about the different cactus and animals that live in the area and how they have adapted. All three hikes were nice because they were completely different ecosystems. 

We wrapped up the day with another ranger program, this time down at the Panther Junction Visitor Center. This one was about night sky and the history of astronomy. It was super interesting and ended with telescopes set up in the parking lot. Big Bend is a gold tier dark skies park, meaning there is little to no light pollution. We lucked out and were in the park with a new moon so the stars were extra spectacular. Unfortunately we don't have the right equipment for spectacular night sky pictures.