Tag Archives: Big Bend National Park

Emory Peak in the Chisos Mountains

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The day after Thanksgiving in 1957, Bob and Ann piled the kids in the station wagon and drove from Sanderson, Texas, to Big Bend National Park. Sanderson to Jacksboro was too far a drive for the family to make for the holiday, so they stayed down on the border and made a true holiday of it by visiting the park.

Santa Elena Canyon, 1957 (notice the height of the people standing by the river, on the right)

For the last leg of my West Texas Interlude trip with Pat and Randy, we ended up at the Chisos Mountain Lodge in the national park — Bob and Ann had made a day trip of it, going all the way to Santa Elena Canyon on the west side of the park and back to Sanderson in one day, but we opted to stop for a couple of nights in the mountains. Shortly after we arrived, we went out for a 1.5 mile loop hike near the lodge and visitor’s center, taking in views of the Window below us. As we set out on the loop, we paused at the map posted at the trailhead, and I recalled a vivid memory of standing in that place with Jen and Janel a year and a half ago, after we’d finished our 5 mile hike to the Window and back. I remembered looking at the dotted lines on the map for the South Rim and Emory Peak and hoping that I would get to come back and see more of the park.

And in that moment of remembrance, I decided that I needed to make it happen. I needed to climb up to the top of Emory Peak. So the next morning, I took my laptop out of my backpack, put in a few snacks and a couple of water bottles instead, and I set off. I tried not to focus too much on the signs posted several times in the first mile of my trip, warning that this is bear and mountain lion country.

I’ll be very honest — I hope I never, ever see a bear or mountain lion. My fear of them is very rational (they’re predators!), so it’s not at all a phobia. Pretty much every step of the way to the top and back I was certain that something was about to lunge for me from the forest. I heard growling a few times (maybe). I also heard something swishing along in the brush beside me once or twice, in step with me, stalking me, stopping when I stopped. It turned out to be my ponytail swishing against the top of my backpack, but for a few moments I was sure my time was up.

Texas Mandrone and agave, on the Pinnacles Trail leading to Emory Peak Trail

For more than an hour, I hiked without seeing another soul coming or going. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake in coming up there on my own — Pat and Randy and I all felt that it would be crowded enough on the last weekend of spring break that I wouldn’t actually be hiking alone all day. Nine miles is a long way by yourself, just you and the predators. During that first hour I sang to myself and the trees and the Mexican bluejays that hopped along the trail in front of me. After that, I leapfrogged with a couple of families and passed a few other people on the way to and from the top, solitary no more. My thoughts changed from certainty that I was being stalked, to wondering will my size in comparison with the others make me easy prey, or will it make me look less appetizing (I don’t exactly have a lot of meat on my bones)?

Four-and-a-half miles later, I reached the top of Emory Peak. Technically, I didn’t go all the way to the highest point. The last 20 or 25 feet are a scramble up some rocks where you get a 360 degree view — but I and a few others in the groups I’d arrived with were satisfied to watch the brave few climb up there while we enjoyed our slightly-less-than 360 degree view. I am unashamed that I only made it to 7800 feet and not 7825.

view from Emory Peak

I sat down on a rock to snack and rest and chat with the others before heading back down, when I realized I got a cell signal for the first time since we’d arrived in the park. I had received text and voice messages, and with my phone to my ear I heard the guy next to me say, “You’re getting a signal up here? Is that why you made the hike?”

“Yeah, I came up here to check my voicemail.”

view of the Chihuahuan Desert from Emory Peak

I made it back down to the lodge without seeing any bears or mountain lions, nor any prickly pear in bloom (almost, but not quite). Sitting at the restaurant patio with cold drinks later in the afternoon, Randy told me about this article about a mountain lion attacking a 6-year-old kid in February, causing them to close all the Chisos Mountain trails while they tracked the lion — which they didn’t find. Turns out the kid was attacked between the lodge and the restaurant. I later dug around on the NPS website and found a listing of mountain lion sightings in Big Bend for the month of February — one of the seven sightings for the month was at “Chisos Mountains Lodge, room 206, top of stairs.” I was sitting on my bed in room 215 when I read this. I guess I’m just as safe on Emory Peak as I am on the way to breakfast.

(For anyone who ended up at this blog because you’re looking to hike Emory Peak, I did the 9 mile round-trip hike with a 2500 foot elevation gain in 5.5 hours — and I highly recommend it, especially if you’ve already been on a lot of the other trails in the park. It’s amazing to stand at the top and look down at the places where you’ve already hiked.)

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Headed West

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It snowed again the week I left Washington, but spring was evident when I arrived in Texas. The backroads of Jack and Wise Counties are lined with wild plum trees in blossom, and at my grandparents’ 0$ Ranch the redbuds, peach trees, daffodils, irises, and lilac bush are blooming.

My grandmother and I spent some time looking through a dresser drawer full of memories and came across a few stray papers of interest. One was the hospital bill from my father’s birth, July 27, 1951 in Pecos, Texas. The other was a receipt for the Pontiac Catalina my grandfather purchased new in 1952. The car cost a little over $3100. My dad cost $123.

This weekend I head out on the big road trip that will be my last hurrah for research on West Texas Interlude, the nonfiction book I’m writing to accompany my grandparents’ photos of life on the road working for Conoco in the 1950s. On the itinerary are Monahans, Pecos, Balmorhea, Fort Davis, Sanderson, Langtry, and Big Bend National Park. My aunt is determined to roll down one of the sandhills at Monahans — I’m still undecided as to whether I’ll join her or stand at the bottom to take her picture. At the end of a long week of driving, we’ll end up at the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend, where I’d wanted to stay in 2010 when my friends and I were diverted to the campground on the Rio Grande instead. This time we have a reservation at the lodge, so hopefully nothing will keep us from a couple of nights in the mountains to end our trip. I can’t think of a nicer place to debrief and write notes on a week’s worth of travel and research — and hopefully sneak in a couple of good hikes while we’re at it.

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Camping Observations from West Texas

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our campsite at Guadalupe Mountains

The final entry from the road trip series “The West Texas Idea”

I thought it would be fun to end this series of blogs on my road trip in West Texas by listing some observations about camping that Janel, Jen, and I made over the course of our trip.  I don’t think I’ve ever included a bullet-pointed list in my blog before.  Enjoy this “first” for me; it may also be a last.

You see lots of different types of campers at national park campgrounds, especially if you plant yourself and observe the comings and goings for several days at one campsite.  Here are some of the people we saw at Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains:

The Block Party Family—They camped in a tent, not an RV, but otherwise they had pretty much the same amenities you would find in a suburban home.  Mom covered the wooden picnic table with a tablecloth at each meal, and she set up a clothesline from the table to the grill.  Their site was lit up with several lanterns at night, and at first glance I thought maybe they had strung twinkle lights in the trees for what appeared to be a party to which all the other campers in our campground had been invited.  Nope, that’s just all their lanterns.

The Bikers—On our first night at Big Bend, the site nearest to us was occupied by three middle-aged men on Harleys.  Unlike other bikers we saw on this trip (and we saw a lot of bikers), these guys weren’t pulling their bikes on trailers behind an SUV from place to place and then riding through the scenic parts of the park.  All of their camping gear fit with them on their bikes.  I was impressed.  Early that first morning, I waited for the coffee to boil in our percolator and watched them pack up their site, fighting off the covetousness in my heart over one bright red retro bike in particular.  When they were ready to go, one of the guys announced to the other two, “Time to wake up the camp,” and they started their engines and were off with a roar.  “Well, girls,” I said to Jen and Janel, “we just missed our chance to see the park on the back of those bikes.”

The Germans in a Van—I also had a problem coveting the van of a German couple we ran into a couple of times at Guadalupe Mountains.  I keep threatening to buy a van to live out of instead of finding a house to rent, and this German set-up would be perfect.  They actually brought the van over from Germany, and who knows where all they have already gone in the States—probably more places than I’ve been.  They parked near our tent site and planned to stay the night, and by craning our necks as inconspicuously as possible we were able to see in the side door as they were getting stuff out to cook dinner.  Surprisingly, the van was very organized inside.  A place for everything, and everything in its place—made me want that van even more.  Jen got a better view of the interior when our lighter gave out while trying to get the burner on our camp stove lit for dinner, and she went over to borrow some matches.  Sadly, when the campground host made her rounds that evening, she declared the van to belong in the RV category, and the Germans had to move from the tent section to the RV section, which is much less picturesque.

The Americans in a Minivan—On our last night at Big Bend, we observed a couple camping in a minivan in the tent site directly between us and the toilet.  With three girls in our group, there was a lot of walking back and forth from our tent to the toilet, so we made quite a few observations of this couple.  It didn’t take us long to figure out that they hadn’t really planned their trip.  I’m not sure how one ends up this far south on the Mexican border without planning, but somehow they did.  They slept in the minivan that night, and the next morning we were quite intrigued by the items we saw outside the minivan at their picnic table: approximately 15 bags of chips, a ladder, and a brand new electric coffee maker that I’m guessing came from a WalMart in Midland.  Janel said she saw the lady walking back from the bathroom holding the empty coffee maker in one hand and its box in the other.  It never occurred to me to bring an electric coffee maker to the park and try to plug it in in the bathroom—but who am I to judge?

In addition to our observations about the people around us, we also noted a few lessons we learned over the course of our trip.  First, and props to my dad for this one, it’s good to organize all your miscellaneous gear and cooking utensils in an action packer-type box that you can take in and out of the back of your vehicle easily when you’re car camping.  I use the word organize loosely—our stuff started out organized in the box, but by the end of the week we were throwing it back in the box however we could make it fit and still get the lid to shut.  But at least it made it much easier to get stuff in and out of the car than if we were throwing it directly into the backseat instead.

Second, car camping with just girls is OK, but if you’re going to do any backcountry camping, it’s probably better to have a boyfriend along.  I don’t mean a friend who’s a boy, because chances are he isn’t going to feel obligated to carry any of your junk for you.  But from personal experience, and observation of a couple we met who camped near the top of Guadalupe Peak, when backpacks and boyfriends are involved, I know who’s going to end up carrying 50 pounds of gear for bragging rights and who’s going to have a daypack with a change of clothes and a toothbrush.

I loved camping and hiking with Jen and Janel, but they never would carry my stuff for me.

And lastly, even though they might make you move your uber cool German van to the RV section, we learned it’s good to make friends with the campground hosts.  Partly because they might loan you a lighter when you accidentally break the matches from your new German friends and still can’t get your camp stove lit for dinner.  Partly because they have lots of stories to tell from all the places they’ve been since retiring.  And partly because they get lonely and bored living in these remote parks, and it’s a nice gesture to talk to lonely, bored people.

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Books on Big Bend

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J.O. Langford's homestead near the hot spring

Part 6 from the road trip series “The West Texas Idea”

Since I love books and I love Big Bend, I think a list of books on Big Bend is in order.

A couple of days before leaving on this trip, I stopped by Half-Price Books to see if they had anything of interest on the area.  Sure enough, I found an old paperback copy of Big Bend: A Homesteader’s Story by J.O. Langford with Fred Gipson (who wrote the book Old Yeller).  It is the first-person account of Langford’s family moving to the Rio Grande in 1909 to homestead the section of land surrounding the hot spring we walked to on our first hike along the river.  Langford’s stone house, a motel, and a small store run by Maggie Smith still stand near the hot springs, and quotes from Langford’s book can be seen on National Park Service placards throughout Big Bend.  It’s a thin, easy book, but a fascinating story to read in your sleeping bag by flashlight after seeing Langford’s territory with your own eyes.  Ten hours of driving from Fort Worth is nothing compared to the several days of travel by wagon and burro it took Langford’s family to arrive at the river from Midland.

A book that kept popping up on visitor center bookshelves and independent bookstores in small towns nearby is Death in Big Bend by Laurence Parent.  Our goal throughout our trip remained fixed on not becoming a chapter in the next edition of this book.  I read a section of it standing in the aisle of Marfa Book Company a couple of days after leaving the park, and man, it only takes one or two stupid moves to end up overheated, dehydrated, hopelessly lost, and dead in the desert.

At the Chisos Basin visitors center I picked up a couple of cute illustrated books for my niece and two little cousins.  For Patience, I got Who Pooped in the Park? Scat and Tracks for Kids, written by Gary D. Robson, illustrated by Robert Rath.  It’s hard to pass up a book with such a name, especially knowing how much my sister and niece will appreciate it.  The handy comparison chart at the back of the book proved quite useful at the end of our hike to the Window—we were able to look through it and figure out what exactly we’d come across that day.

For my cousins Ryan and Haley I got Don’t Call Me Pig! A Javelina Story, written by Conrad J. Storad, illustrated by Beth Neely and Don Rantz.  I have to admit, I keep calling javelinas wild hogs.  I will try to stop.

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Big Bend National Park, Pt 2

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hiking in Boquillas Canyon, Big Bend National Park

Part 5 from the road trip series “The West Texas Idea”

We did several good hikes in the park, including the popular Window trail in the Chisos Mountains, the trail to Boquillas Canyon along the Rio Grande, and a longer river hike to J.O. Langford’s hot spring and beyond.  Our hike to the hot spring was the first time we encountered the unique system of selling souvenirs devised by the people of Boquillas village across the river in Mexico.

As we were walking toward the hot spring, an older couple was walking back towards the trailhead, and the lady said to Janel as she passed, “The vendor is sitting across the river from the hot spring.”

The couple kept going, and Janel repeated the statement to us in a puzzled whisper.  None of us knew what this was supposed to mean.  We continued walking, and a moment later came across a small display of tacky ornaments made out of beads, in the shape of scorpions and roadrunners and other local animals.  Several walking sticks were propped against the rock, painted with cactus and roadrunners and the words “Boquillas, Mexico.”  A handwritten list of items and prices was posted next to a plastic bottle with the top cut off, which had been left there by the “vendor” to collect the money for any souvenirs one might wish to purchase on the honor system.

Just as the lady said, not one but two vendors were sitting under a tree across the river watching us.  We spent a minute or two poking around at the hot spring and decided to keep walking and stay longer at the spring on our way back.

I’ve had people try to sell me all manner of items as souvenirs in many different countries and through many different methods, but this was the first time I’ve seen this particular set-up.  I’m sure the men were just trying to make an innocent buck or five off us Americans, and I feel sorry for the loss of tourism income for these folks when the “transparent border” in the park was shut down after September 2001.  But it was more than a little creepy to be watched in silence from across the river as we hiked, especially after the news report of just a couple days earlier that an American tourist had been shot by Mexican thugs on Falcon Lake, further south on the Texas-Mexico border.

By midday the sun was blasting down on us in all her heat, and we had our fill of desert hiking for that go-round.  We turned back towards the trailhead, and there in the middle of the river was a dot moving toward the Texas side.  One of the vendors was crossing, presumably to check out their sales for the morning.  A moment later a prop plane flew overhead, and we read the words on the underside of its wings:  Border Patrol.  We made our way back to the hot spring, took our time sitting in the little shade we could find and tried to ignore the silent staring presence of the vendors (both back on the Mexican side by this time).

Hiking in the mountains the next day held less tension, given the relative distance from the border.  My main stressors from that hike were the numerous signs posted about black bears and mountain lions, combined with the ample evidence of their presence in the form of scat along the trail.  I’m glad I didn’t see the trail map at the visitor center with Post-It notes to mark recent bear and lion sightings until after we got back.

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Big Bend National Park, Pt 1

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on a hike along the Rio Grande, Sierra del Carmen in the background

Part 4 from the road trip series “The West Texas Idea”

Our plan at Big Bend National Park was to camp at the Chisos Basin campground—we had read it was smaller and at a higher elevation than the other campground on the side of the park that we were entering from.  But when we arrived at the entrance station after 10 hours of driving, a sign posted on the station window greeted us mockingly:  “Chisos Basin campground closed for pavement resurfacing until the end of October.”  All three of us had repeatedly read the information about camping in Big Bend on the National Park Service website, checking for rules about what types of fires are allowable and what types of water and facilities would be available at each campground.  Chisos Basin has toilets but not showers, charcoal fires but not wood fires—and it’s in the mountains.  We drove 10 hours to stay in the mountains.  Would it kill the Park Service to update their website so that three weary mountain-seekers don’t find out at the front gate that they have to camp, instead, down on the river with a less than thrilling view?

The Rio Grande Village campground turned out to be perfectly nice.  It would have been more than just nice if it were what we had been planning on all along, but it wasn’t.  Still, we found a nice flat spot for the tent, with space in the shade for afternoon naps on the grass after hiking.  The nights weren’t as cold as we had expected since we were down near the river, and without a cloud in the sky we could leave the rainfly off the tent and fall asleep looking at the stars overhead.

Not long after drifting off that first night, a coyote howl startled me back to consciousness.  The second night, around midnight, it wasn’t just a howl, but what sounded to me like a pack of 50 coyotes about five yards from the tent, howling and yipping.  The third night, I woke up to the sound of a javelina snorting and rooting around at the ground near our picnic table.  I heard the coyotes again, but much further in the distance.  When I climbed out of the tent the next morning, I saw one lonely coyote standing about 20 feet from the tent.  I stood still and watched him for a few moments, but he didn’t seem to care about me at all.  A roadrunner sped past on the path behind the coyote—Chuck Jones must have received cartoon inspiration from camping at Big Bend.

(To be continued…)

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Pecos

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Dad holding Aunt Kay, Aunt Kathi, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Pat on her fifth birthday

Part 3 from the road trip series “The West Texas Idea”

When the idea for a West Texas road trip came about, part of my motivation came from my roots on my dad’s side of the family.  As a kid I heard my dad mention growing up in several little West Texas towns, and I listened to my grandmother tell stories of the various motels and houses their family lived in during the ‘50s while my grandfather worked in just about every corner of the western part of the state.  Some of the stories I heard more than two or three or four times, but I never took the time to write any of it down or work at remembering or understanding the places they talked about.  Maybe it’s my being in my 30s now and seeing how frail life is, or maybe it’s that I’m learning more about storytelling, but something in me now desires to know my family’s story and be a part of recording it.

Recently my aunt and her husband have worked hard at taking several hundred of the family photo slides and scanning them into digital format.  Before my trip, I sat down with my grandmother to look through the photo CD and listen to her talk about the people and places in each slide.  I also had my dad list out every town he could remember living in as a child.  He listed 12 towns in West Texas and a few others back here in North Texas; my grandmother named a few others, including towns my dad didn’t recall because he was still an infant when they lived there.  Pecos, Fort Davis, Sanderson, Aspermont, Big Spring, Monahans, Texline, Sweetwater, Snyder, Seminole, Stamford, Coleman, San Angelo, Big Lake, Gainesville, Jacksboro, Wizard Wells, and finally, Everman.  I probably missed a few.  Hopefully I didn’t add any.

For some reason I get a little nervous when I ask my grandparents or dad questions about the story of their life in West Texas in an earlier era.  I’ve done tons of interviews for linguistic or ethnographic work in China, and I’ve started doing interviews as a writer here in the States—why is it that my own family makes me nervous?  All I can figure is that I feel guilty that I have to ask, that I should have been listening more carefully for the past three decades so I would already know all this stuff.

The short version of the story of why my dad lived in so many towns while growing up is that my grandfather worked as a land surveyor for Continental Oil Company, or as it is known more widely today, Conoco.  He was on the survey team that went out to every place in West Texas where Conoco put a well, and he measured and staked the land.  That’s about a zillion miles of land.  Just a few minutes before I sat down to write this, I showed my dad the photos of my trip, and he came to one of a striking mountain with a flat face as viewed from the entrance to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  “That’s El Capitan—Daddy used that mountain as a sight for lots of his measurements all throughout that area because you can see it from a long ways away.”

I don’t know much about land surveying.  I don’t know if it’s sight or site.  But now I know that my grandfather was using that mountain to do his work two decades before that land became a national park in 1972.

And I know that my grandfather married my grandmother in 1950 when she was 18 years old and he was 20, and they left their hometown in North Texas to follow his job to West Texas.  A year later my father was born in Pecos.  Less than a year after that came my uncle.  Then three girls.  Five kids in seven years, away from home, often living in motels.  Tell me that’s not a story waiting to be told.

So, on the way from Fort Worth to Big Bend National Park, we drove out of the way so I could see Pecos.  Driving into town is like driving into 1955.  Square one-story homes, simple design, pastel paint.  I could picture my dad and his siblings playing in the front yard edged with cactus.

We were only in town long enough to take a couple of photos of the historical marker for the world’s first rodeo, fill up the tank with gas, and regret eating Dairy Queen in Odessa when we could have gone to La Norteña Tortilla Factory for their self-proclaimed world famous tamales.

Maybe one day I’ll get to go back to Pecos for those tamales and to learn more about the family story.

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The West Texas Idea

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Plans come about in many fashions.  The plans for my road trip through West Texas and New Mexico came about over a (long) period of time, mostly by me and a couple of friends starting off on one idea but getting distracted towards another.

I was supposed to be driving from Texas to Washington this October, with the purpose of staying for several months to write and to get to know the area and the folks in a church up there.  That’s a long way to drive by myself, so I asked my friend Jen if she wanted to go all or part of the way with me and fly back to Texas.  She thought that sounded like a good idea, so she set aside the vacation time.

“You know, I’ve been wanting to go to Big Bend National Park—what do you think about driving through that area on our way?” I asked her.

“Sounds like a good idea,” she said.  It’s on the border of Mexico, sort of the wrong direction to go from Fort Worth to Washington, but still, we both decided that’s the route we needed to take on this road trip.

“You know,” she said, “that’s not too far from White Sands, New Mexico—why don’t we go there too?”

“Good idea,” I said.  I didn’t have any particular hankering to go to White Sands at first, but Jen’s been wanting to go for years, ever since she got stuck on hold in 2003 with the customer service rep for AT&T over an internet issue at our rent house in Fort Worth.  The guy on the other end of the line found out she’d just moved to Fort Worth and told her that she ought to take a day trip to White Sands.  The 11-hour drive from Fort Worth to White Sands is as much of a day trip as Big Bend is on the way to Washington, so Jen is just now getting around to going out there.

OK, so we’re up to Big Bend and White Sands.  Recent months of Texas Monthly gave us a few more ideas of things to do in little West Texas towns, scenic drives in the area, art galleries to visit, restaurants that we can’t pass up.

I told my aunt about the trip.  She and my dad and their other siblings grew up in West Texas and went to Big Bend when they were kids, and she and her husband love the area still.  “You know, if you’re going all the way out there, you should climb Guadalupe Peak,” she said.

I looked at the map.  Guadalupe Mountains National Park is sort of on the way from Big Bend to White Sands.  Good idea.  We added it to the itinerary.

“You know, this is the kind of trip that Janel would enjoy too,” I said.  Janel also lived in that rent house in Fort Worth in 2003, and the three of us have gone on a few road trips over the years—Fort Worth to Monterrey, Mexico (before it was deadly to do so). Buffalo to New York City to Niagara Falls to Toronto. Seattle to Vancouver.

“Good idea,” Jen said.  So we asked Janel.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Janel said.

“You know, my car is kind of small.  And we really ought to camp at all those parks and places we’re going to visit.  And I really should stay home for the holidays this year.  So why don’t we go in a bigger vehicle to carry all our gear, and I’ll just come back to Fort Worth with y’all and go to Washington in January?”

“Good idea.”

So we’re leaving this Wednesday, and I won’t be blogging again until we get back.

(Please click NEXT to read more on the West Texas road trip.)

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