An Unexpectedly Thrilling Drive

April 29, 2013

We knew the drive we planned to take on 170 out of Terlingua up to Fort Davis was a scenic drive, but we didn’t realize just how dramatic it would be. This drive—the “River Road” to/from Big Bend National Park—has been designated by National Geographic as one of the most scenic drives in North America, and we see why. Unfortunately, our photos don’t do it justice, as they just can’t depict the vast emptiness and stillness and jawdropping 360-degree views. The road winds through Big Bend Ranch State Park, a relatively new park that is next door to the national park, and follows the Rio Grande River for about 60 miles. This state park is much less developed than the National Park (which hardly seems developed at all). 

As we drive along, scenes like this just keep changing and changing.

One of the exciting (terrifying??) things about the drive is that the road hasn’t been smoothed out much; it follows the contours of the land, going steeply down into the canyons and then straight up the mountain, so it’s like a rollercoaster ride. At the top of the hills, you can’t see the road ahead of you, and it feels like you might drop off into emptiness (like it feels when you start down our driveway at home, except this goes on for miles). 

 

The road zig-zags around mountains wherever it can.

At every bend and drop, you encounter a completely different, stunning view of mountain and river vistas with carved, sculpted, rocky mountains of just about every possible color and shape that rock can assume. I just can’t come up with words to describe this drive—and you’re probably getting tired of me trying.  But it was unbelievable.

Eventually the road just goes up and over the mountains.

We stopped at a few places to try to capture the beauty of the place. In one canyon where we stopped, a single dove was calling and the call echoed and was amplified by the rock walls—very eerie. We were the only car on the road, and the silence, other than the dove call, was almost heavy in your ears. This is WILD country, and we’re so glad it’s being preserved in its wild state.

Before heading up over the mountain, we stop to see how the Rio Grande cuts through the mountain and listen to a lone dove's calls echoing through the canyon. There are no other sounds. We love wild places like this.

As we descend down one of the mountains, we stop at one of the unique rest stops.

After we left the state park, we drove through the small town of Presidio, and had lunch at El Patio, a restaurant on the main drag, that had been recommended to us. Food was Mexican, of course, and tasty. It seemed that everyone else in the restaurant was Hispanic and everyone but us was speaking Spanish. Hard to tell this place from a Mexican town.

Next we headed to an RV campground in Fort Davis, which is near the Davis Mountains state park with reported good birding, and also near the McDonald Observatory, which we plan to check out tomorrow. They have star parties on Tuesday evenings and we hope to view the heavens through some of their famous telescopes. This area has the best dark sky viewing in the lower 48, we hear.

  

After leaving Presidio we get stopped at a border control check point

Fort Davis is quaint, historic and filled with birds. We just sat outside the RoadTrek for a couple of hours and watched the birds in the trees around us. I’m still hoping for the painted bunting…we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

State count: 8 [Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas]

Odometer count:

Surber, VA: 107,435

Fort Davis, TX: 110,921

Accommodations avg cost: 25 nights @ $15.76/night

Where we are:

Ghost Town and Jeep Tour

April 27-28, 2013

We did some work on our computers Saturday morning, moving into the campground recreation room when it got a little hot in the van. 

Then we left to tour Terlingua Ghost Town and have dinner at a restaurant there that was recommended to us by other tourists.

As mentioned in the last blog, Terlingua is the remnants of an old mercury mining town, which used to have about 2000 people living in it. Stone and adobe ruins are scattered all over the hills, along with mine shafts and a few pieces of old mining equipment. The mine closed for good just after World War II,  when the market for mercury crashed, but people have moved in and out of town, using some of the old structures for housing and building a few new houses here and there. The old mining company store has been turned into a pretty good restaurant and a souvenir shop,

 and there’s a brochure for a walking tour of the ghost town. According to one Terlingua website I looked at, a couple of dozen “semi-friendly” people now reside here. From what we’ve seen, it’s a motley crew!

You pass the old cemetery as you enter the town, and we stopped to check it out. 

According to information in one of our guide books, the hazards of mining and the usual dangers of living in a rough western mining town killed a number of people, but the event that put most of the residents in the cemetery was the influenza epidemic of 1918. The graves range from unmarked slightly raised mounds with a rough wooden cross laid on top, 

to elaborate “hornitos” or “little ovens” in Spanish, which are stone or mortar structures built over the grave. 

The Mexican Day of the Dead celebration is apparently big in Terlingua, and on that day everyone dresses up in costumes and goes to the cemetery to clean and decorate the graves and light candles.

We picked up a walking tour brochure and strolled around the old town. We see the Perry Mansion on a hill, an abandoned large house built by a mine owner. 

Local legend has it that the owner brought his new wife here to live in the house, and she took one look at the place and left on the next train! The church is Catholic

 and still has plain wooden benches and a rustic altar, and some pictures on the walls. It almost looks as if it’s still being used for services, but then a bird flies through and we spot the mud bird nest on the wall, and Jack points out that he can see daylight through the roof. So maybe not. It’s a sweet little church though.

Note swallow nest on right above the left side of the window.

After our walk, we have a tasty supper in the Starlight, an old theatre now turned into a restaurant. It’s a busy place on a Saturday night, maybe busier because the town hosted their annual Chihuahua dog races this afternoon. (It’s a fundraiser. Apparently Terlingua has a lot of fundraisers. I read in a town newsletter that a fundraiser is being held this coming week to assist a resident with medical bills resulting from a collision with a flying saucer. I’m not kidding, that’s what it said. This is a very strange place.)

Today we have our jeep tour of the national park, to see some of the places we couldn’t easily get to in the RoadTrek. Our guide and driver is Lou, a nice and knowledgeable lady. 

Our guide Lou is on the right. The other couple is from Montreal.

We head out at 9 am. Our jeep is an open-air vehicle with seating for 5 customers plus driver. We only have one other couple on the tour with us, Michael and Ann from Montreal. We head out onto a washboarded gravel road for the first leg of the journey—just like at home! We’re heading first to Santa Elena Canyon, a 1500-foot deep canyon carved by the Rio Grande, one of three major canyons in the park. It’s dramatic, with a spectacular entrance, like you’re going into a GIANT tunnel. 

Note the family on the sand bar. The father on the right is about 6 feet tall.

We hike about a mile into the canyon, until the trail disappears because the canyon walls are so sheer. The echoes in the canyon are eerie. We hear a lot of bird calls, but can’t spot the birds—we can’t tell where the calls are coming from due to the echoing. We hear a canyon wren and a common yellowthroat, and we do see many cliff swallows. Jack has to investigate the river life and spots a “huge fish,” about 6 feet long he says, which I mentally adjust to 3 or 4 feet. We think it was probably a catfish. I also can see a couple of fish from the trail, but the water is quite low. A beautiful and other-worldly spot

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We then head to a scenic campground in a grove of cottonwoods for lunch, and do some more birding. Sorry, still no painted bunting. We spot lots of birds though, but we don’t add any new ones to our list. We visit several sites of ruins of homes, 

This one was the sleeping quarters for a very large family. The man apparently had several wives during his 108-year lifespan. The structure is about 4 ft high.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

one fort from the Mexican Revolution era, an old Texas Ranger station, as well as overlooks onto weird and beautiful geological structures and formations. At one stop, which is ruins of a ranch from about 1918 that  still has a windmill pumping water, we see a red racer, a species of nonpoisonous snake indigenous to the area. It’s a bright pinkish red, looking a lot like one of those red garden hoses.

We arrive back at the tour office about 3:30 pm—a tiring but exhilarating day. The heat and dust kind of wear on you. Tomorrow we finally leave Big Bend National Park area and head for Fort Davis and the McDonald Observatory.

State count: 8 [Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas]

Odometer count:

Surber, VA: 107,435

Terlingua Ghost Town, TX: 110,753

Accommodations avg cost: 23 nights @ $15.70/night

Camping Near a Ghost Town

April 26, 2013

It was a quiet morning at Chisos Campground when we awoke—not much birdsong, unfortunately. We took a hike down toward the Window before breakfast, while it was still relatively cool, and saw just a few birds, but no new ones to add to our list. So no painted bunting yet…  We did see a jackrabbit and a group of five Carmen Mountains whitetail deer running and playing with each other in a flat area below us, and we watched them a while through our binoculars. This is a subspecies of whitetail deer that is found just in this mountainous area of West Texas and Mexico. These deer are much smaller than our Virginia whitetails—a mature buck measures just 33 inches at the shoulder. Cute little things.

After breakfast, we packed up and headed back to the Chisos Lodge area to get our email and look around some more. We took more photos and ordered some hummus wraps for lunch from the restaurant. 

Last view of the Window where we have lunch

Enough for supper too. The British publisher I work for, Elsevier, just sent me a new book to edit, this one called The Role of Animals in Emerging Viral Diseases, so I’ll have some work to do over the next couple of weeks. I downloaded all the files from their website while at the restaurant. I love it that I can do my work on the road!

We’re now heading just outside of the National Park to an RV park near a ghost town called Terlingua. This was a quicksilver (mercury) mining town around the late 1800s/early 1900s but the mining operations pulled out in the 1940s. Sounds like an interesting place to explore. Its claim to fame now is that the “ghost town” is the site of the national chili cook-off championship in November! We’re actually coming here to book a jeep tour of the national park, so we can see some of the rougher areas where we can’t take our RoadTrek, and learn a little more about the area’s history and geology—but we also wanted to check out the ghost town. (Several outfitters of tours and river rafting trips are located near the ghost town.) We first check into BJ’s RV Park, a dusty camp of motley trailers and a few large RVs, some looking like permanent living places with yards and fences and garden ornaments. Milton, the caretaker, checks us in. When I ask if he’ll take a check (no credit cards here), he tells me “Yeah, sure. In my 17 years of being in the RV camping business, I’ve never gotten a bad check.” Pretty remarkable, I think. 

After claiming our site, #2, we head back down the road to one of the outfitters that we passed on the road. They have an opening for the jeep tour we want on Sunday so we book it, after a pleasant chat with the lady who owns and manages the business, along with her husband

We decide to cruise the area and see the sights, while waiting for it to cool down a little. Along the roads are numerous groups of trailers and shacks that pass as “malls.” 

We stop at one that advertises a quilting shop and I go in to check it out while Jack takes pictures.

Marguerite, the older lady who owns the shop, is extremely friendly and talkative and has some great stories to share. She tells me a story from her third-grade years: the state of Texas wanted to purchase the land for Big Bend Park to preserve it, but it was depression times (this was in the mid 1930s) and they didn’t have the money. Someone had the smart idea that if every Texas school child donated just one dime, that would be enough money. So the state asked all the children to donate. Marguerite asked her father for a dime “to buy Big Bend” but he pooh-poohed the idea and wouldn’t give it to her, no matter how many times she asked. (A dime was a fair amount of money in those days—paid for a movie ticket.) Finally, she was the only one in her class who hadn’t donated. She thinks someone must have spoken to her father about it, because one day he handed her two buffalo nickels, and she turned them in to her teacher that morning, a big relief to her. The state was able to purchase most of the land that is now Big Bend National Park, but at first the US government wasn’t interested, so Texas declared it a state park. Later the state of Texas donated the whole thing to the U.S. government and it finally became a national park in 1944.

Marguerite also gave us some great travel tips for routes to travel and sights to see on our way out of here. She consigns “made in Texas” quilting and craft items from 12 or 13 vendors, in addition to her own quilting. She had some lovely quilts for sale, as well as jewelry, purses, placemats, wall hangings and other items. I bought a few things (more rooster placemats, Jeanie!) as a thank-you for the stories and info, and finally went back out to the van, where Jack was about ready to send out a search party for me. He did get some great photos of this mall while waiting.

Next we cruise through the ghost town of Terlingua, a couple of miles from our campground, and decide to come back tomorrow for a more detailed look. It’s a strange place of ruined jacals (pronounced “hah-calls”), which are basically little shacks made of rock or adobe mud bricks, mixed with various houses, shacks and trailers where people are now living or squatting. The actual mine ruins are nearby. The ruins of the ghost town cover a large area—we’ll get photos and more info for tomorrow’s blog. There are a few shops and restaurants, and we stop at one for some refreshment before heading back to camp, where we take awhile to get organized. We put out our awning, rug and chairs and eat a late, light supper outside. It’s still pretty warm, as the sun hasn’t gone down yet, and Jack puts a wet washcloth on his head as a cooling method—works well!

 

Jack with his "cool" hat eating chips and guacamole.

A beautiful southwest sunset.

The van cools down nicely as it gets dark and the breeze picks up. We watch a movie on our iPad streamed from amazon.com (good wifi here), before nodding off. Fun day.

State count: 8 [Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas]

Odometer count:

Surber, VA: 107,435

Terlingua Ghost Town, TX: 110,753

Accommodations avg cost: 22 nights @ $15.23/night

Where we are: