Head of Tide

Our trip to Big Bend National Park had nothing to do with finding family roots. To my knowledge, we were the first in our family to visit there. We lived in Texas for several years and never visited the park. For some reason, I thought that it was a long trip out there (which it actually is), but we made numerous longer trips to other places. Once, while traveling on Interstate 10, we passed an exit pointing to the park and I realized we were going a lot farther (to Arizona) than the distance needed to visit Big Bend. I really needed to reconsider my reluctance to go there ‘because it was too far’.

We arrived in late November and temperatures were moderate. We stayed at an RV park near Terlingua which was probably as nice as anything else in the area but very rustic. Imagine a parking lot with very few trees. Now imagine that the parking lot is not paved, nor smooth, without curbs, just..sandy. Our RV location was a big, dusty, rough with ruts, ‘parking lot’. We opened our windows due to the mild temps and low humidity and paid for it with a fine layer of dust…on everything…every..single…day. It was great.

We drove the 30 miles into the park on three separate days so we spent a lot of time in the car going from one place to another, but it is really pretty country.

Highlights included Santa Elena Canyon, the Chisos Mountain Basin, Boquilles Canyon Trail (with the singing Jesus and the tamale boys) and the river road drive from Lajitas to Presidio.

You may be wondering about the singing Jesus. It might not be what you think. We didn’t have a major Christian moment along the trail but rather a Mexican gentleman named Jesus, who sang. The Boquilles Canyon is a box canyon which dead ends at the Rio Grande and is very dramatic as the Rio Grande River flows along next to the trail. Almost at the end of the trail we came across some jars with money in them sitting on a beach near the river. We also heard someone singing (a song that I don’t remember now) from across the river on the Mexico side. The singing was okay but not ‘spell binding’ and the gentleman yelled, “How do you like my singing?” I made hand motions of ‘so-so’ but said nothing and continued on. He then hollered, “Would you like me to sing something for you? My name is Jesus. Put money in the tip jar and I’ll sing you a song”. I replied, “No thank you,” and moved on. As I mentioned, the canyon dead ends so we turned around and walked back. On our way, we realized that Jesus was now on our side of the river. He had crossed the 50 yards of river via a small row boat and was standing on the beach. I should not have been surprised by this but I was. Jesus, a singer trying to make a living by serenading the tourists, decided to retrieve his money or persuade us further. I preferred the seats I had selected for the performance with the river between us, but we passed without incident. We heard him singing to others as we made our way back to our car.

While we were in the Big Bend area, we visited the lovely town of Alpine, drove the loop from Ft. Davis out to the McDonald Observatory, drove through Marfa (but not at night) and Marathon. Check, check, check, check, check, we scratched those items off our bucket list. An overdue trip to the Big Bend proved worthy of the wait.

Next: Hot Springs