A West Texas New Year

A short while later…

Delight! A kind soul at the visitor center helped me cut through the crap with the state parks service; we’re in! He was able to check us into a campsite no one was using last night, since, of course, they don’t make reservations at the visitor center in person. Which no one who answers any phone seems to know.

For the purposes of “make sure someone knows your plans,” I offer the blog these details:

We checked in for the Vista del Chisos campsite at the Barton Warnock Visitor Center at 1030a on Monday 12/31 for a one night stay: three people and three vehicles in the party.

We’ll be heading into the Big Bend Ranch State Park from the Presidio side in a couple hours and probably won’t have any cell coverage at all until tomorrow afternoon on the way out.

Happy New Year!

Evan found a pocket of internet near a gas station and got an update posted over on OppositeLock. Check it out!

This morning we packed out of the motel in Terlingua uncertain about our plans for the evening, but thanks to a gentleman in the Warnock Visitor Center for BBRSP, we were able to get our hands on a campsite. A remote one. He suggested we begin our drive immediately.

West Texan Big Sur

The first leg of our trip was Highway 170 from Lajitas to Presidio. I think I may have found Texas’ challenge to Big Sur. The road runs along the mountains and dips through the Rio Grande valley for about 60 miles and it’s incredible.

We hit Presidio for last chance gas and bathrooms before heading back into the park.

Big Bend Ranch State Park

The State notes that, “Big Bend Ranch State Park is Texas’ largest state park, at over 300,000 acres. It extends along the Rio Grande from southeast of Presidio to near Lajitas, in both Brewster and Presidio counties. Just a stone’s throw from Mexico to the south, the park is in an area so remote and rugged that it has been called El Despoblado, or ‘The Uninhabited.’ In spite of that name, this awe-inspiring region boasts a rich human history.” It is also one of the least visited State Parks in the system, except this week when the National Park is semi-closed.

The massive ranch was amalgamated slowly as ranches passed between families and were consolidated. The ranch came up for sale again as a whole in 1988 when Texas Land Commissioner Bob Armstrong pushed Texas Parks and Wildlife to buy it. My fellow Austinites already know who this is because of Matt’s El Rancho’s famous Bob Armstrong Dip. And twenty miles into the park along unpaved but easily passable roads, we found his second namesake, the Bob Armstrong Visitor Center at the Sauceda Ranger Station.

We checked in with the rangers station and bought coffee mugs, which is apparently a thing we do now. The personnel there also talked me into a map:

We’ve already had to rescue three groups this week who were using the map in the free newsletter. You really need one of these.

Cashier and park guide who sold me a map despite the number of atlases we have.

As we were registering our vehicles, the guides wanted to actually go outside and look at our cars to ensure we had the clearance to make the drive to the site. I guess they get a lot of AWD cars out here.

Well, the Jeep and the Land Rover will be fine, but I don’t know about that Nissan…

Park guide as we were registering our cars.

Gotta admit, that one hurt. Turns out she just hadn’t heard of an “Xterra” before. George quickly chimed in, “That’s probably the best of the three.” I beamed briefly, before realizing that, despite speaking specifically of ground clearance, the way he said it sounded kinda set me up for a major failure. She didn’t even get ten feet out the door before she said we’d be fine. But did caution us “take the big hill slow and plan your line.”

The first hour or so of the drive wasn’t even that bad.

For a while we didn’t even know what she meant by “the big hill.” Nothing was particularly steep and though it was really rocky, there weren’t any clearance problems.

Ah. There it was. And she was right, no big deal, just really steep and rocky to one side. But after we lightly patted ourselves on the back for getting up “the scary hill” we realized that it continues up over the mountain another few hundred yards. But after Black Gap it was nothing. And suddenly we were there!

I will say, it may not have been super difficult, but I definitely got my money’s worth on the Xterra’s rear locker today. And I avoided launching myself into space on a couple extreme uphill starts this time, which apparently makes me less entertaining to watch.

Vista del Chisos

Ranchers once joined two arroyos with a small earthen dam to gather water for cattle here, but that since washed out and the small reservoir is now a parking area for this campsite. But it left behind a more varied assortment of plants than we’d seen elsewhere. And also though being at the bottom of two runoff creeks isn’t what I had in mind when I heard the word “Vista,” the area was beautiful, sheltered from wind, and even without climbing higher, we could see the Chisos mountains to the east. The State Parks campsites guide suggested exploring to the west.

Also every damn plant here will exact an offering in blood or paint.

Evan even found a “dinosaur plant” growing in the wild. These can close themselves up when they dry out and remain that way for decades and wake back up with moisture. Previously, he’d only seen these for sale on ThinkGeek.

We set up camp pretty quickly and got to making dinner. A short while after we heard something moving about in the woods. Evan said he saw “an eye” through the vegetation. I didn’t see it, but I heard it walking around us. We stashed the food back in the Jeep pretty quickly and the wind shifted and didn’t hear anything further.

It had been several long days in a row so making it to midnight was also a little difficult, but we managed to ring in 2019 still awake by the roaring fire George built.

Then we retired to our accommodations — the luxurious Hotel Xterra and George and Evan’s tent.

2019

Glad to see that you didn’t freeze. I know I came close…

Evan.

This new mummy bag is terrible. I would call it hot garbage, but there was nothing hot about it.

George. Who apparently did freeze.

And apparently our visitor from the brush returned last night after we went to bed. We’d cleaned up all our supplies but some cacti right outside their tent was shreaded.

And a plain water bottle I’d left on the picnic table did freeze, so it was decidedly colder last night than every forecast predicted.

We all had a long way to go today so we packed up and headed out pretty quickly. Back at the ranger station, Evan asked “so where was the scary hill?” Apparently on the way down it didn’t make much of an impression on anyone.

What check engine light? I don’t like your tone. Land Rovers feature legendary reliability and not one has ever broken down.

Evan. But it was just an EVAP code, probably because of the dust.

We made our way back down to Highway 170 pretty quickly and re-inflated for the last time to get ready for the drive back.

We passed through Presidio again on our way back to Marfa for a quick lunch. Along the way we spotted but didn’t have time to stop at the Profile of Lincoln (a mountain range in the distance looks like his face) and the Shafter Ghost Town which was actually huge and I want to go back one day.

After Lunch, Evan gave me the satisfaction of deploying his Christmas present momentarily so I could snag the photo. George, on the other hand, has been wearing that Jeep belt all week, but it is surprisingly awkward to get a picture of someone’s belt buckle in a way that isn’t very awkward.

Freezing fog returned today and slowly rolled over the mountains north of Marfa as we headed back home.

Visibility stayed incredibly short all the way through Fort Stockton where the boys turned north and I kept going down I-10 to make the run for home.

In all, a fantastic trip and a great start to the new year. West Texas is full of magic and I already can’t wait to go back again.

Howdy! Happy New Year from all six of us to all of you. We made it safely back out of BBRSP through Presidio. Incredible experience! Many heroic stories and photos to come, but first lunch.

Over on Oppo and O&E, Evan shares his thoughts and a collective photo dump on our trip West.

After making Taylor drive up from Austin consistently for the last several years, he finally managed to convince us there is something worth seeing in Texas. Skeptical as though we were, we obliged and started planning a trip to the Big Bend area for the time between Christmas and the New Years holiday.

I’d like to think I’ll find time to come back, but if not this trip will always be fondly remembered.

But as always, you really want to know who won, right? He covered that, too. With a lot of interesting technical comparisons.