Registered: Oct 2001
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What a blast!

Takin road trips with Dad is one of my favorite things to do in the world, next to drinkin beer and kissin dogs. I wish I could remember what town this was. It may have been San Angelo, but I'm not sure. It was before we hit Fort Concho, I know that much.



Most people likely wouldn't know it, but west Texas is full of cotton fields. I stopped and picked a couple of boles, even though they were soggy from all the rain we'd had the last few days. I got em right here on my desk right now. Not sure why, however.



Here's a couple of shots of the old Hilton in San Angelo. It's now the Cactus Hotel. There are a lot of small towns in west Texas that have high-rise Hilton hotels. Folks might now know that the chain started in Texas in, I think, Ranger or Cisco. It was one a those oil boom towns where Conrad established the empire that funds Paris Hilton's worthless life.





and on to Fort Concho. This is one of the best preserved forts in Texas, because it was one of the few that wasn't taken apart by locals for the building materials it had before the state had a chance to step in and protect it. I think the city of San Angelo owned it in the interim.



This fort was home to the Buffalo soldiers. I was surprised to stumble across this group of CMH honorees buried on the grounds under one of the most impressive mesquite trees I'd ever seen. The entire grounds were home to some of the biggest mesquites I've seen in my life.



I don't know if these guys were negroes or not, but I assume they were, given the nature of the fort.









This is the old schoolhouse on the base. In fact, there is a public school situated next to the fort with teaching facilities in part of the old hospital building. How cool is that





Our old version of "no child left behind". I figure it's as good a method as any. They did teach the kids Latin back then, after all.

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This was an amazing mesquite. This tree must be hundreds and hundreds of years old. It split in two, but both sides are still growing as is.







This is the only building at the fort that is in ruins today. It is one of the old officers' quarters.





yes, my happy face



a history lesson









Tabletop Mountain. I love this countryside. We started seein huge wind power generators everywhere on the horizon about this time. I don't think they show up well in the pics, however.

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You can always find an open restroom in the courthouse in a small town.






I love this countryside more'n just about any place on earth.







and on into Marathon, where we made what amounted to base camp

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This was the motel. Dad had the room on teh right.



and I had the one on the left



They had an awesome courtyard with a fireplace that I checked out at night, but there were old people hangin out there. So I drank beer and smoked schwag in my room and wrote postcards to friends in prison.





We took off early in the mornin to get to the park about forty miles away from Marathon.







Los Caballos. These mountains were originally formed by the Ouachita Uplift a hundred million years or so ago. Maybe it was three hundred. Not sure. That was the same event, or process, that formed the Ouachitas, Great Smokies and Appalachian ranges elsewhere. However, the Laramide Orogeny that created the Rockies also happened here, making this the only mountain range in the country formed by two separate geological events like that. Los Caballos, or "The Horses", are the scalloped ridges created by those two events over time.



There's a shitload of creosote bush around here. That's a really ancient plant. There are specimens that are thousands of years old living today. That's one next to me on the left.



This was the first place that we turned off and stopped. They had some fossil remains in a roadside display from an early equine ancestor. Dad snapped some pics of me atop another exhibit uphill where he couldn't go. I stumbled on a fresh kill that I'd scared a bird away from apparently. Looked like a rabbit leg he'd been gnawin on.











I know this looks pretty desolate, but it's powerful medicine for me for some reason.

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On to Dugout Wells.







I was a little surprised to find a date palm growing right here, but these sources of water that we stumbled across in the desert created some real garden areas.




There's some decent hiking trails that wander off into the Chihuahuan desert all over the park, but I didn't wanna drag Dad off too far from the truck.

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The next stop was the Rio Grande and the entrance to Boquillas Canyon. There'd been considerable rainfall over the last week or so, so the river was up and movin along at a good clip when we were there.



That's the canyon in the distance.





I don't know where this gelding came from, but he was pretty docile.






I left Dad behind and scouted down the trail to the mouth of the canyon. I got to the water's edge and surprised at how fast the Rio Grande was moving.




The trail down to the canyon was pretty wild and jungled up and muddy. I'm glad Dad elected to stay behind. It was quite a bit further than I'd thought as well. I was gone for half an hour or more.






Surprisingly, when I got down close to the canyon I came up on this little batch of souvenir stones and handmade recorders fashioned out of river reeds or bamboo of some kind. There were a handful of Mexicans across the river who shouted at me and tried to get me to buy some of it. Apparently they run a pretty brisk trade by leavin that stuff on the US side and then swimmin across to sell it to tourists. The park frowns on it.


I ran across a few other hikers.




An old couple from Mississippi took my pic for me. I could've taken em if they'd run off with my pentax, dammit.




The horse was waitin for us on the way out.




We stopped a few miles over at Rio Grande Village, so Dad could get down by the river at the boat ramp they had dozed through the grass there.


homeland security, mothafuckas.

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Probably the nicest area in the park for me was the Chisos Basin in the middle of the Big Bend area. We stopped just outside the basin on the uphill road alongside Green Gulch. This area used to be heavily forested. It was then lumbered and overgrazed. There are still quite a few black bear and moutain lions in the park, and this is where you find em mostly, I'd reckon.











And this is the Basin itself. The gap between those mountains in the distance is called the "window", and from the lodge in the center of the Basin there is a stunning view through that window into the plain beyond. Oddly enough, however, I took no pics of that view. Stoner.


Casa Grande peak.


The basin from the outside.


We stopped at every one of these little exhibits that didn't have other people hangin out at em. And that was most of em, as the park was lightly trafficked while we were there, apparently. This one is titled "Invisible Wildlife".


generic desert shot


another shot from teh outside lookin in.


This is the ruins of the Sam Nail ranch, where I was charged by the brutal and bloodthirsty javelinas and barely escaped with my life. I stared down the low-born beast until it rolled over and did some submissive wetting and shit itself gettin outta there. I didn't see where it went as I was runnin the other way hollerin to beat hell.


Any place that has a spring around these parts gets to be a regular jungle, and the Nail place wasn't an exception. There was a regular thicket down there, and that's where I cornered the beast.

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This is a good shot of the "window' from outside the basin. That's the view just opposite the Nail ranch.


I left here wanting to read a bunch of geology texts.


This is the view as we made our way down towards Santa Elena Canyon




That white clay lookin stuff is volcanic ash. I thought at first that it was just caleche or some clay.




Santa Elena Canyon is stunning. This sheer wall across the river is in Mexico, as is much of the best scenery in the park, it seemed. It provided a nice backdrop however.






That's the mouth of the canyon where the sun is streaming through. The Rio Grande comes out right there, but the water was up too high for us to get back there. They were picking up canoers here, however, that they'd dropped off upriver a ways at Lajitas.


Lookin back east downriver


and back up from the water's edge






the badlands.






and so long Big Bend. I hope to be back in February or March of next year.

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The ghost town of Terlingua was a bit of a disappointment to me. It was like a prairie dog town of new age hippie rejects livin off tourists between annual chili cook-offs. I'll guarantee you every swingin dick in this place thinks he's the town curmudgeon and eccentric wild man. I can sniff a cartoon character a mile-away. I wrote that book myself.



jesus, can you get a little over the top with it, ffs?


The only bright spot of the place was the cemetery. It was an old mercury mining town, Terlingua was, and we got there shortly after the Day of the Dead festivities. I'd be curious to see how those misfits handled that bit.








The drive from Terlingua and Study Butte up to Alpine was beautiful as well. I was kinda sad to leave the park behind in the distance.

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We left Marathon early the next mornin and drove through a rainy, foggy mornin takin our time on the 550 mile trip home. I had to stop, however, in Sanderson, Texas and take a few pics for a friend in Oklahoma who has roots there. I don't know if he'll recognize any of these places or not, but I was fond of Sanderson. I could live in any one of these towns, to be honest, and I'd be fine so long as I had an internet connection to keep me in touch.









I didn't realize we had 75 as a limit in Texas, but I don't see any reason to keep it that low down there in that neck of the woods. I also don't see why I should've gotten a ticket in Mertzon for doin 74 in a 70 on a road just as remote and uncluttered, dammit. :evil:



We stop frequently to get our circulation goin again when we take road trips. I always take pics of Dad walkin away from me down the road for some reason. I reckon that's emblematic of somethin, but I'm no Freud.


I don't know what this plant is, but it's everywhere in these parts. I stopped and plucked some of it to go along with the soggy cotton I picked on the way down.




We finally found a spot on the Pecos that looked almost like a river. Dad camped out not far from here in McCamey when he was about six years old (that'd be 1933 or so), and he remembered hearing a mountain lion screamin at night.

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Our last stop was at the ruins of Fort Lancaster. We weren't aware of this fort's existence. It's another Buffalo soldier outpost, but oddly enough, the guy runnin the joint grew up in east Dallas. He was garrulous enough, and followed us everywhere, even out to the truck when we left. I was wonderin if he wasn't havin a moment with me without my knowledge. However, he was friendly and certainly knowledgeable about the fort.














We stopped in Ozona and ate at the Cafe Next Door and ran across these markers on the way home from there.





We were a few hundred miles from home still, but once I saw wheat and live oaks I relaxed and considered myself in the neighborhood.



The Edwards Plateau is the most beautiful place on earth and the home I carry with me wherever I go. It is quintessentially Texas as much as any geographic region of the state could be, I reckon. I love it.





Maybe I just needed to get away from things for a few days. Maybe I just missed Dad. Whatever it was, the drive to the Big Bend and the chance to simply waste the time was big medicine for me. I'm glad to be back, and I'm already stressed about money and work and all that again. But at least I made a deposit into that account that had sat idle for too long.

oxoxxox

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Very cool, I drove from El Paso to Dallas and out the other side on the way back from Los Angeles once, but I didn't spend a ton of time exploring around. I did see huge stands of cactuses, but that may have been in southern New Mexico.

I have like 36 days off saved up, maybe I need to hit the road and see something.

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There are some great pics in there Mug and I am amazed at the similarity in terrain from there and where I am in southern Utah. Plateau tops and volcanic rock everywhere here, too.

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quote:

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Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ------. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation. Gallantry in action.

---

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awesome pics.

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Registered: Apr 2004
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You guys rock.
The horse and the javelina story made it perfect.

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I know its just a horse, but cool pic.

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It's like some indian magic horse coming to guide Mugtoe on to the true path.

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