December 31, 2022 - January 6, 2023
Saturday, December 31, 2022
We left Fort Davis State Park and stopped in Alpine to get gas and groceries. From there, we drove to Big Bend, We stopped along the way at a little town called Terlingua. We did not stay too long, just checked out a gift shop and tried to find out about a possible New Year’s Eve dinner at the Stardust, a club-theatre in the little town. It looked to be a set price, set menu event, and we decided we would stay at the campground and celebrate New Year’s Eve there.
We arrived at Cottonwood Campground in Big Bend around 3:30. It was up to 70 sunny degrees. We parked the cars and quickly got ready for a bike ride. There were still a couple hours left of sunlight remaining. We rode from camp out to the Santa Elena Canyon Overlook, then back to the campground, a distance of about 15 miles. The road had a few challenging hills.
We made dinner after it became dark. It was kind of chilly, and we made another Mesquite Charcoal fire. It burned really wonderfully. The camp host stopped by to make sure that we were not burning wood, as that was prohibited. We had a nice bottle of Champagne, obtained back in Carlsbad, and it was on ice in the cooler. Laura had apparently thought about this night long ago, as she had two plastic wine glass for us to use. The Champagne tasted really great, too. Laura had picked up a National Parks Trivia Game when she was at Guadalupe Mountains. That was a fun surprise. We played two games with it. In the first game, she won 5 hands to 4, while in the second game, I won 5 games to 4. So overall we tied at 9 games apiece. I said that, like many other things, there’s not competition and everything we do comes out even, to benefit us both.
It was a quiet, fun night. We sat there talking, feeling happy as the fire burned, red embers glistening at us in the dark. After our Trivia game, despite the warm fire, I was getting a little chilly, so I took a short walk, a mile or so, out and back to the main road. When I got back, we continued talking and sipping Champagne. We talked about more travel together in Fall 2023, and both of us liked the idea. As it neared midnight, we Champagne, held hands and rang in the New Year. And right after midnight, almost as if on cue, an owl hooted. We agreed that it was a sign, Nature approving what we were talking about, traveling together next Fall. (We used the Merlin app on my phone to determine it was a Great Horned Owl.) We sat up talking almost an hour after midnight talking about our possible route. One scenario had us meeting up in Michigan, then driving west to Washington and Oregon, then south into California, before swinging back east into Arizona. Laura seemed keen on a second route, by which we would visit the parks we had just visited. She is hoping that the Visitor Centers at these parks would by then have approved sale of her activity calendars and other products, and she would go to each park to facilitate the progress. It was nearly 1AM when Laura climbed into her 4Runner for sleep and I went to my van.
Sunday, January 1, 2023
We were up early, sitting in our chairs with coffee and tea, ready for the sunrise. We had a nice view right from the campsite. Later in the day, we did a ride to Sante Elena canyon and back, getting in about 16 miles total, When we returned, we rode into the Pratt family campsite to say hello. Unfortunately, we rode on a grassy area that had pricker barbs in it. They stuck right into our tires! I turned my bike over to spin the wheels and make it easier to get them out of the tires with my gloves. I also went over to Laura’s bike to help with her tires. While I was doing that, one of the younger Pratt children, Levi, somehow managed to get his fingers caught between the chain, the front chainring, and the front derailer. He was screaming pain. I got over there quick and looked it over, figured the best thing to do was try to gently turn the crank backwards, and hope it did not hurt him too much! Got his fingers out. Whew! Mom and Dad said, he’ll learn from that not to play with things like that. Later, Laura and I went to hike Sante Elena Canyon. While we were there, we ran into the Pratts again: Richard and Angela and their eight kids. Levi was doing fine. He just had some bruising on two of his fingers.
Monday, December 2, 2023
Again we sat in our campsite, setting up our chairs and a table in front of my van, and watched the sunrise. It was fantastic sunrise. We sat and enjoyed it with our coffee and tea. We both had our journals out and we must have looked busy writing. I have copied some of mine here in italics.
This morning is another example of bringing the peace and energy of Nature into our lives. Sitting here, watching the sunrise, sitting here for nearly two hours, there is a serenity, calm, and peace. At the same time, there is an energy, an exhilaration. I feel inspired. These characteristics are here all the time. There is potential every minute of every day. Part of this energy and exhilaration, part of the whole thing, is of course Nature and the landscape. The sky. The Sun. The birds singing and flying around. The trees. Every living thing. Also, a huge part of it, for me, is sitting here next to Laura, an extension of this whole trip. There is an energy that seems to rise out of her, out of us. That’s what I feel. How much is Nature, how much is that she is here, that we are here together. There is an energy in our harmony.
Anyway, it is wonderful. So, this needs to be the way of life. This needs to be the reality, the inner reality of life, not just “out here” in the timeless flexibility of a road trip, but in the day to day responsibilities and choices we make in other environments, in the “real world.”
The energy available here today, right now, through Nature, through Laura, and through others, is available in those other environments. Be it. It is available through interactions with other people, through our authentic relationships with friends, social activities, and community.
Right now, I/we are seeing a window into the great omnipresent energy of life. The supreme manifests itself through this window. And it does so, I believe, through the windows of others. Our window is but a spec of the totality. Yet it contains the essence of that totality, like one star in the vast sky of the universe. The totality is available when “working 9 to 5” just as it is here. It perhaps takes a more concentration or a different degree of concentration in some other environments. I need to make the effort to do that.
A woman named Cindy Lou walked past us and commented it looked very busy, like there was a lot going on, as we penned our thoughts. She stayed an talked awhile about her travels, long trips outside the United States, with her partner, Michael, including stops in Nepal, Greece, and Kenya.
After she left, our camp host Roy stopped by again to chit-chat. We talked about the owls, among other things. I asked him about some hiking trails. Laura and I were going to go up to Chisos Basin later today. The park map they give out at the entrance station had some information, but he said he had some other maps that would be helpful. He left and brought them back to me later. He was right, his maps were much more detailed and informative.
Cottonwood campground has an irrigation system. It gets turned on weekdays, we learned, as water was filling up some areas of the campsites. This resulted in a great number of birds congregating near the water. Someone told me the water exposes the insects and the birds sit there delighted to take part in a feast. I don’t know if that is true of not, but yes, there were a lot of birds at the water areas. We had been at Cottonwood two nights. We were leaving today and heading to the other side of the park to Rio Grande Village, where there was another campground. It was 56 miles away driving distance. But on the way, we headed up into the Chisos Mountains. We did the Window hike, a five mile round-trip hike to a rock outcrop, where multiple drainages of Chisos Basin come together in one spot and become funneled over the outcrop in a narrow opening. It must be a wonder to see when there is rain.
After our hike, we drove the rest of the way to Rio Grande Village, where we found our site and made some dinner just before sunset. A camp host name Laurie came by and said hi. As with all camp hosts we had met on this trip, she was outgoing, friendly, and informative. She let us know about the Boquillas border crossing, about how easy and safe it was, telling us about the two restaurants there. She had been over there recently, and she remarked on what a good buy she got on a bottle of vanilla extract.
Tuesday, December 3, 2023
We woke early as usual and did a morning hike on something simply called the Nature Trail. It leaves right out of the campground and goes a short distance to the Rio Grande River. It crosses a marshy area over a metal bridge, then does a loop that has a short spur trail up a hill to a nice place for watching the sunrise. We got up there with plenty of time to see the first of the morning rays peak over the horizon. As we were leaving our campsite for the hike, we met a dad and his son, Lance and Drake. We chatted with them a minute, simple hellos, and now, from our perch on the hill, we could see them in the distance walking on the trail near the river. They looked quite playful, with Drake, who appeared to be about 10 years old, jumping on and off rocks, and other times Lance holding Drake’s arms and swing him around. It looked like they were having a great time. Eventually, they too climbed up to our vantage point and we talked a little more, before heading back to our campsite. We learned they were staying at site #89, and we said we would stop and see them again later on.
Back at the campsite, we met camp host Ken, and we received very similar information from him, about crossing the border, as we had from Laurie the night before. We soon learn Ken is Laurie’s husband. As we are talking with him, we suddenly hear the sound of coyotes yelping. It seems unusual this time of day, around 10AM, for coyotes to be out and about yelping. It sounds like many coyotes. Ken is excited by it and yells, “That’s a kill!” and he hops into his golf cart and goes off down the road. We follow him walking as fast as we can, catching up with him about 150 yards away. The yelping has stopped, and he says he found nothing. Everyone goes back to normal.
I went for a short bike ride to check out the border crossing. I was surprised and disappointed to see that the border crossing had chain across the entrance road with a CLOSED sign hanging from it. We had planned to go over the crossing next day, for Laura’s birthday, and have lunch as part of a day of fun and celebration! I continued my ride long enough to get to five miles, then turned around and headed back to camp. I stopped at the visitor center to check it out. I learned that the border crossing would be open next day. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesday, so we could “go to Mexico” still on her birthday. I also bought some stickers for her, the kind with national park information on them. I had done this a few times as little -pre-birthday gifts for her, and she would stick them on the cover of her current writing journal.
When I arrived back at the campsite, Laura was painting javelinas. Javelinas are wild animals that are often referred to as pigs or boars, because that is what they look like. But they are not pigs. They are collared peccaries. Read about it. They are found all over the southwest and there is a substantial population in Big Bend. But we did not see any at Cottonwood. We were hoping that changed here at Rio Grande Village. When I was here in the past, I had seen them frequently in both campgrounds. So, Laura was painting javelinas. Laura had also met Lance’s wife and daughter by this time, Charlotte and Sierra, and Laura was painting one of her creations for Sierra, as it was her 13th birthday today!
Laura and I drove down to the Big Bend Historic Hot Springs in the afternoon. We took her 4Runner because the hot springs are at the end of a one-mile-long narrow dirt road, and my van would probably not make it. From the parking lot, it is another quarter mile or so walk to the hot springs. They are in a roughly 30’ by 30’ foot square section of water adjacent to the Rio Grande. They are marked off by a broken-down stone wall on all sides, with water touted as 105 degrees feeding into it. One can sit in the springs for a while, then hop over the wall into the river, going back and forth, hot and cold, hot and cold. There is also a sandy mud on the floor of the pool, so one can use that to rub one’s skin, a kind of hot water mud rub. It was greatly enjoyable.
When we came back to the campground, we found Sierra and her family walking around, and Laura gave Sierra the drawing of the Javelina with a birthday note on the back.
Later in the day, when we were back at our campsite, Drake came running over to us and said “we’re singing happy birthday to Sierra” and invited us over to their site. We followed them over and we all sand and enjoyed oatmeal cookies! We talked for a while, learning a little about each of them, finding out Sierra was a nature lover, she liked to draw, she liked to play music, and she like running. Drake enjoyed these things, too, though he was a little more shy about talking about it. They lived in Cordova, Alaska. Laura told them about her plans to visit all National Parks over the coming years, and they invited us to come see them in Cordova, saying they could help us find accommodations and what-not. What-not would include how to get to Cordova! Because there is no road to it. One would have to either fly in on a plane or take a boat! Wrangell-Elias National Park is near Cordova.
Later that night, I told Laura I had been thinking about our travel over the next 1-2 years, continuing thoughts from our conversation about it New Year’s Eve. I’ll note that, even before our talk on New Year’s Eve, Laura had referenced plans to go to Hawaii and Alaska together. She had mentioned these things more than once, saying things like “when we go to Hawaii” and so forth.
So, I told her I had been thinking about our bicycles. I have a road bike that is not good for dirt roads. Laura has a hybrid bike that is good for dirt, but not well suited for paved roads. I started talking about the possibility of getting two new bikes, one for each of us, that would be better suited for both paved road and dirt road. And I talked about the possibility of traveling with one vehicle or two, with pros and cons. After that, she asked me if I had other thoughts about the future. I told her, in a 20 minute or so conversation, that I had developed feelings for her. I also told her that I understood it was early, not much time had passed since William had died, and that I thought it was too early as well, but I wanted to get an idea of where her mind and heart were going forward over the next 1-2 years or so. She said it was too early. I said I understood. I was not at all surprised. What surprised me was that she said she could not articulate any other thoughts on it. She could not tell me anything about her thoughts and feelings about how she felt about me or what the next 1-2 years would be like. I found it surprising. We had been traveling together for about six weeks, and we had had many discussions about all sorts of things, some frivolous and simply fun, some personal and at times hard, all sorts of long talks that, I thought, had bonded us in a way that we could talk about anything in an open, trusting way. I had never seen Laura to be inarticulate about anything. But we did not talk about it anymore that night.
Wednesday, December 4, 2023
Laura's Birthday! It was chilly morning, 34 degrees. As usual, we started the day watching for the sunrise with coffee and tea. We also started with giving Laura her present of purple hiking boots. The boots she had were older, and there was a lining in the inside that was causing some discomfort. While we were at Organ Pipe Cactus, I told her I would buy her new boots for her birthday. So, when we passed through Tucson, after leaving Organ Pipe, she shopped for some boots at a Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Sierra, Drake, and Charlotte came and we all sang Happy Birthday. Sierra had drawn some art for Laura, too! After they left, before we went to over to an adjacent campground to talk with a group of young men. Laura had noted they had prayer rugs and used them in the evening and morning. We chatted about a variety of things as one of the men, Omar, made tea for us. They were from Saudi Arabia, graduate students at various universities in Texas. Laura gave them all Other Nice People stickers.
After that, we headed to Mexico for lunch. We parked along a dirt road that leads to the US border station, passing through the station, then walking down a dirt path to the Rio Grande. It is a very relaxed looking environment, very different than at Lukeville, near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, with it’s tall border walls and high security checkpoint. Here, there are no walls along the border, only the rive separating the two countries. One can walk across the river, it is not too deep here, quite easily. However, there is a row-boat ferry, and for $5 per person, one can stay dry and head into Mexico, which is what we did. On the Mexico side, there is no border station or checkpoint. There are men and boys with donkeys, horses, and pickup trucks, and for a fee, they will take you into town via one of these transportation modes. We opted to walk, as it was a beautiful sunny day, and it was about a half mile to town. Boquillas relies on tourists for a livelihood. There are numerous stands selling a variety of goods, ornaments and statues; t-shirts, dresses and other clothing; artwork. There is a church and two schools, two small grocery stores, one bar, and two restaurants.
We went into one store and talked briefly with the owner. Laura gave him a few of the children’s activity books she had created, as part of Other Nice People, and asked him to give them to his grandchildren or to the teacher at the school. From there, we went to lunch at the aptly named Boquillas Restaurant, where we had Cheese Enchiladas and Carta Blanca beers. Lunch was good fun. Numerous children stopped by the table offering wrist bands for sale, both here and as we walked around town. Laura gave then Other Nice People stickers, too, putting the stickers on their shirts. I told Laura, these will mean nothing to the kids. You need to tall them what it says in Spanish. Otro Bonita Personas! That way the kids would know what they were wearing.
After lunch and heading back to the campsite, we went to the Hot Springs again, staying there for a about half hour. As we were leaving, a guy came riding up the trail on a horse. He dismounted and told us the horse probably walked over from Mexico. He had worked on a ranch for much of his life, and he knew about horses apparently, having used his belt as a bridle. Laura decided she wanted to sit on the horse, so the guy steadied the horse as she tried multiple times to jump and/or pull herself up onto the horse. It did not take long, and she was sitting on the horse.
We went back to the campsite and had dinner. I gave Laura a bottle of Roth Vineyards, Alexander Valley, Cabernet, but she did not open it that night. Later that night, I went into my van and came back with four candles in a Hostess cupcake, singing again, Happy Birthday to You!
We revisited our travel plans during the day as well. Laura had been saying how much she liked Big Bend, especially Cottonwood, so I checked availability, and we were able to get two more nights there, Thursday and Friday nights.
Thursday, January 5, 2023
We woke early this morning, planning to get an early start to the Chisos Mountains again and to hike Emory Peak. It was cold, too, 34 degrees out. We got up and departed in the dark, even before coffee and tea, and we headed west as light started to appear on the horizon. We stopped at Panther Junction, the main visitor center in the park. Laura’s phone could not get any reception, so she used my phone to call her Mama and both daughters. We were at Panther Junction about 45 minutes, then off to hike Emory Peak. Emory is the highest peak in the park at 7,825’, and it is 10.5 miles round trip. We did a fast pace up, a slow pace down. There are two peaks and we climbed both. It was fantastic, great views, and we met several nice and interesting people along the way. On the drive to Cottonwood, there was a nice full moon over Chisos Mountains. Later in the night, Laura opened her birthday wine, drinking right from the bottle, and telling me how good it tasted. I made a chicken with rice dinner with General Tsao sauce.
Friday, December 6, 2023
Brrrr!!!! It was 30 degrees this morning! Still, we got up and enjoyed it, sitting in front of van; We met two professors from Hendrix College in Alabama, one who was a biologist with a keen interest in birds. Discussing birds, I told him that our Merlin app had identified two owls in the campground, the Greaat Horned and the Long Eared. He said the Long Eared was interesting as it is not see as much.
I did a bike ride up to the Sottol Overlook, a long climb and a distance of about 30 miles roundtrip. Laura was going to ride her bike down a trail to the river, at an older, now closed border crossing, but she noted there were a lot of thorny looking vegetation types, and she parked the bike and walked in some ways. Lo and behold, later on she saw she had a flat tire. Strange weather indeed, although only 30 this morning, the temp in the afternoon hit 85 in the shade!
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