Bending it Big

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We got an early start on Monday for our trip up and around to Big Bend NP. We headed west on Texas Rt 90, back across the Pecos River high bridge. After just a few miles we stopped at the Texas Information Station/Judge Roy Bean Museum. It's just off the highway to the south, and easy to miss, but it really is a little gem. The Judge was, by all accounts, a real western character. I had seen the movie about him years ago (with Paul Newman in the starring roll) and it made quite an impression on me. I had stopped there on my previous trip, and so I knew that Cathy would enjoy it. Besides the great information station, with it's super friendly and helpful staff, there is also a terrific cactus garden, with living examples of all the varied local desert flora.



After that we continued on to Sanderson TX, where we stopped at what was described to us as a “sort of” hardware store when we asked. I needed to get a bike tire patch kit, something that is foolish to forget when riding in cactus country – my bad. The store turned out to be a real find, sort of reminiscent of the Old Forge Hardware – they had everything! Everything that is, except lights – I had to use my flashlight to try to find things hidden in the rabbit-warren like interior. We made some finds though, including a patch kit, so it was a good stop. All along this way Rt 90 follows the old Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) RR line, we played tag with the same west bound double-stack container freight train. We took turns (by which side of the road the tracks were on) getting the engineer to sound his horn – some kids will never grow up. Then it was on to Marathon TX, where we looked around the Gage Hotel (fantastic place!) and grabbed a few last grocery items.







At Marathon we left 90 and headed south towards the park, after several days of looking at the peaks of the distant blue Chisos range, we were now pointed straight at them. The road to the park, while not by any means crowded, was much busier than when I was here before, so we worried that we might not find a camping site. When we stopped at the entrance gate (in for FREE again – thanks Old Fart Pass!) they told us that at last check, there were still 26 spots open – first come, first served. So we sprinted (if 45mph could ever be considered a sprint) the 40+ miles to the Rio Grande Village campsite. There were a bunch of RVs in front of us, and this was not the only route into the park, so we made a bit of a contest of it. There was a couple in front of us pulling a brand new Airstream, and we had visions of them haughtily claiming the last open site. They stopped at the Pather Junction Headquarters though, and we cruised on by them. Sure enough, when we got to the campground, we scored a great drive-through corner site in the far end of “no generators” quiet zone. The Airstreamers arrived a bit later and drove by our site a couple of times looking for a place to roost – sorry!







The only difficulty with our site was it's orientation. In order for our solar panel to charge our batteries, we need to have the trailer pointed south. That was possible with this site, but doing that made for a less than ideal placement, according to the expedition's '”feng shui” supervisor. As you can probably imagine, the requirements of that particular officer easily supersedes (I was going to say “trumps” – but that word is dead to me) the requirements of the engineering department. Never the less, a bit of late-day sun did fall on the panel, enough to get us back up to 99% charge – not too bad.







We walked and rode around a bit to get the lay of the land, we also found that the CG store had pretty decent wifi – the first we've found in a while. After a bit, we hiked up a short trail near our site and watched a wonderful sunset over the Rio Grande, with the Chisos in the distance – beautiful! Tomorrow, we plan on some more exploring, and some more serious hiking, there is so much to do here.

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