Visiting Big Bend: Seeking Sunstrokes

“The Americas were first settled by ancient Natives and then Colonial Europeans, followed by the globalized world. But Texas? Texas was settled by Air Conditioning.” – Old Sean

Highbright Views

Big Bend, in my opinion, has some of the most spectacular scenes and hikes that America has to offer.  Very few countries can hold a candle to America’s quintessentially rugged hiking trails.  And even fewer are so freeform and wildly accessible through thickets, mountains, rivers and canyons.

Big Bend is a natural masterpiece of eroded volcanos.  Great red juts of rocks tower over an otherwise naturally flat scene.  Furrows where fierce rains have made their marks reveal stone-embedded grounds. Often, the sky is a uniform blue, brightened to the point of near-whiteness when cloudless.

But during our visit, this desert sky wasn’t cloudless.  Great, billowing blimps of cumulonimbus clouds dramatized the sky.  Hardy plants completed the scenery, either spindly bushes, squatting cacti, spiny short palm like figures or odd, tall stalks more concerned with catching wind than sun.

I love hiking Big Bend, but the summer is a difficult time to do so in earnest, as the heat of the day is a very real and very powerful threat to energy first and life second.

Desert Routes

Our first visit was a long drive down Maxwell Scenic Drive.  Roadrunners sprung around our vehicle as we puttered down the road.  We spotted numerous leopard-spotted lizards, painfully oblivious jack-rabbits and oddly bold millipedes crossing the roads.

Maxwell Scenic Drive eventually led to the daunting wall overlooking the desert (which I like to jokingly refer to as The Wall.  If one were to watch Game of Thrones and see the formidable structure of ice that towers over the northern expanse, one would have a good idea of this canyon’s imposing nature).

The actual name of this feature is the Santa Elena Canyon.  It’s a surprisingly sheer tower of red rock which dominates this portion of the desert.  But the wall isn’t completely solid, with a huge gap carved by the Rio Grande.

Unfortunately, my brother and I struggled to get to the canyon itself. 

We walked along the wall easily enough, dipping around the river and checking out the blackened trees that had been killed off during ferocious floods, but the canyon trail itself was protected by deep mud. 

Since we’d be forced to reenter a rental car, we couldn’t muddy ourselves to that extent and tried to find an alternate route.  As a result, we ended up far to the side of the canyon entrance, clambering up rough rock.  My brother plunged a hand into a cactus while I scrabbled futilely at a particularly difficult patch of vertical danger. 

In the end, the heat and a break in the clouds, more than anything else encouraged our downward retreat.

It was still a fun climb.

Mirage Seeking

Following this challenge, we rehydrated in the car before driving off down a challenging gravel road. 

Our next hike-target was the Balanced Rock, a bizarre stone wedged atop a pair of unlikely pillars perched on a low mountain of red rock.  My brother and I shuffled down the sandy canyon, grateful for the sudden arrival of cloud cover to peer at the unusual feature. 

Above, eager vultures eyed us with the usual mix of weariness and hope, eventually wheeling away when my brother and I failed to drop dead on flat ground.

Still unfinished, my brother and I drove into the unique and impressive Chisos Basin of Big Bend. 

This “Basin” is an odd desert feature.  A crown of volcanic mountains, far taller and more imposing than anything else in the park changes the very landscape and flora.  Odd spindle plants appear with bright yellow leaves splintering off.  Birds are much bolder, flitting wildly, and the road alters between long, flat highways to tight turns up and down cliff faces.

Chisos Basin is also home to a series of RV parks and tent campsites, which were positively packed during our visit. 

My brother and I both wanted to visit The Window, a gap in the cliffs that gaze out into Big Bend’s lowlands, but parking at the time kept us five miles away from the actual feature.

While attempting to make the trip, we felt our strength flagging once again.  We did have a short hike around the area to a few much closer overlooks.  Numerous signs warned we were deep in mountain lion and bear country, and recommended we 

A) Be really good at throwing rocks 

B) Shouldn’t let our non-existent children meander alone and 

C) Avoid smelling delicious. 

We did only one of those things and remained on the swivel for the rest of our little jaunt.

Boarderwatching

Next up, we were inclined to drive all the way to Boquillas Hot Springs which boast a fair number of Native American Petroglyphs.  I visited this area during my last visit to Big Bend, but on this occasion, it was sadly shut down.  Likewise, the usually boarder trip to Mexico was also closed, citing COVID as a very staunch reason.

I suppose Americans will not be welcome to rejoin the international world for a some time coming.  Understandably so.

Despite this, my brother and I began driving back to our hotel in Alpine.  We managed a few more interesting stops before returning.

The first was Big Bend’s Fossil Discovery Exhibit, which hosts dinosaur skulls, a history of the park’s geography and an example of dig sites.  At this point, the cloud cover my brother and I had been enjoying had vanished, and the heat blistered down. 

During an especially stiff gust of scalding wind, my brother and I raced to the car.  I won by cheating.

Dust-Brushed Towns

At this point, we left Big Bend’s territory and began visiting various, distant sites elsewhere in the region.

Further down the road we hit a brief rainstorm before pulling into a bizarre little building.  Camped on the side of the road was a miniature, single-room Target, completely empty aside from a wasp’s nest perched right between a highway and railroad track.  The small space beside the railroad grew wild watermelons sprawling out across the ground.

Finally, we returned to Alpine, at which point we stopped at a unique building we had seen several times after driving in.  This building, near Sul Ross State University is a totally chrome old-school diner called Penny’s Diner. 

An interesting building, we only poked our heads inside for curbside pickup before finally returning to our hotel.

Still, our day was incomplete. 

One of the most perplexing mysteries of the desert include the Mystery Marfa Lights, a series of odd, sporadic orbs that appear randomly in the deep desert outside of Marfa, Texas. 

My brother and I did our best, waiting forty minutes into the night to catch a glimpse of the orbs, but the night remained dark.  Only a beaming half-moon challenged the clouds overhead while thunderheads flashed dangerously on the horizon.

Finally, exhaustion doing its part, my brother and I retreated to Alpine for the night, prepared to start the day again tomorrow.

Until then,

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written June 30th 2020

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