"Winter Holiday"
(Gotta be politically correct)
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Participants:
Bob Brooks
Kathleen Brooks
Gay Culbertson
We left San Antonio at the un-Godly hour of 6:30. (shudder) It definitely felt like we were leaving on a trip. The temperature was cool but quite comfortable and the weather report was calling for at least a week of good weather. Arrived at the Caverns of Sonora about 9:30... in plenty of time to take a short tour of this jewel of a cavern.
Just before noon Gay Culbertson came driving in. Gay is a good friend and paddling buddy from College Station. He was the only one out of nearly a dozen friends who was able to take off and join us. After a quick sandwich lunch we started the caravan to Big Bend, planning on arriving in time to setup camp before dark.
In Ozona we pulled over to fill up the cars... soon thereafter Gay started falling behind. Gay's car began having serious trouble and we limped along for miles in the middle of nowhere looking for a service station. This would become a recurring problem, plaguing us the rest of the trip... Though I must say, once he discovered the problem in a gas line jet, Gay got cleaning out the lines down to an art. At one point, while Gay worked on his car near a filling station, Kathleen and I searched a vacant lot for cactus. We discovered a fine specimen of 'cattle crippler', a low growing barrel cactus with huge nasty thorns. Getting permission from the Gas Station we started our collection then and there... Unfortunately we had not considered that we were heading into a National Park. We hated the idea that a ranger might find our cactus and accuse us of collecting it within the park boundaries. So, just north of the park entrance we loaded all our specimens up into boxes and hid them behind a clump of sage beside the road.
We arrived in the park long after the headquarters closed. Driving down Glenn Spring Road near Nugent Mt., we found a pull-off big enough for both cars and parked for the evening. Our first night in Big Bend we sat up watching the stars until the moon came up. I swear they have more stars in Big Bend than anywhere else in the US. After several hours of star gazing it was a shock when the near-full moon came out.
This Christmas we had a full moon. This will be the last full moon on Christmas day for almost 30 years. For the first few days of our trip we were still basking in near-full moons. Once the moon rose it was quite bright enough to do a desert hike.
Friday Dec. 27
Friday morning, after a breakfast of migas, we broke camp and decided to reconnoiter the roads heading up to Juniper and Pine Canyons. Our plan was to hike the South Rim trail Saturday morning, camping out on the rim Saturday night and then hike out Juniper Canyon to the south. We would leave both water stashes and a vehicle at the foot of Juniper Canyon. But, the first question was whether we could get my Toyota truck to Juniper Canyon ! The drive turned out to be bad, very bad... but still passable in my truck. Anything less than a truck couldn't have made it.
After several hours of eating dust and jarring our kidneys we returned to the main road and drove to Panther Junction. We were very disappointed to learn that we were too late to reserve a camping site on the South Rim. Actually, my knees had been bothering me, and Gay's back was acting up... I don't think we were terribly upset to miss the strenuous South Rim hike. Time for a change of plans. We decided to camp one more night near our original campsite and spend the remainder of the trip in the desert. You gotta be flexible!
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| Photo by Gay Culbertson |
Saturday Dec. 28
We took in the Ernst Tenaja hike today. Tenaja means big earthen jar, and this is an apt description. This canyon is composed of striated, multihued rocks colored from white to lavender, twisted and folded and utterly beautiful. Flash floods have cascaded down the canyon, carving out huge, undercut basins which hold natural reservoirs of water. These pools are among the few spots where water normally collects in the desert and are a favorite drinking spots for animals. Unfortunatedly, the rock walls around the rim are polished smooth. An animal unlucky enough to fall in is unlikely to be able to climb out of the murky pools.
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| Photo by Gay Culbertson |
We hiked in the canyon as far as we could without ropes and then climbed a low spot in one 200 foot wall to take the overland route back to the truck. Finding our first living rock cactus was a huge thrill... Later they became almost common place.
After driving from the easternmost end of the park to the westernmost, where we camped the night at Terligua Abaja; we met Wolfgang Haertel & Ursula Theis. They are a delightful German couple who have been touring in the US and northern Mexico for the past 3 years. They were just returning from summering over in a remote canyon in the Yukon. This must have been quite a change for them. They had been living in a cabin that could only be reached by bush plane and was snowed in 9 months out of the year and came straight down to the deserts of Big Bend !!??
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
Sunday Dec. 29
From Terligua Abaja we returned to Castolon, and from there north to Tuff Canyon. This is a beautiful arroyo just off the road. We were able to walk a couple of miles before coming to a spot we could not negotiate without ropes. Continued north to another desert hike out to the Chimneys. The Chimneys are a ridge of rock thrust out of the barren desert floor. Around them are ancient Indian pictographs and a shelter once used by early settlers. After returning to our cars we drove on to the Basin.
Tonight we stayed in a cabin that Kathleen and I had reserved two years ago. Over the Christmas break of 1995 Kathleen (then still Kathleen Till) and I came to Big Bend. We were lucky enough to get into a cabin that had just had a cancellation. This was luck indeed. Normally the cabins can be reserved a year in advance. On January 1 '95 they start taking reservation for the entire year of 1996. By the end of the week all cabins are booked solid for the entire year. For us to walk in without reservations, during the busiest season of the year, and get a cabin is little less than miraculous. In '95 we were so impressed by our cabin (#100- the most secluded cabin in the Basin) that we got up early on January 1 and called in a reservation for December 29-30, 1996.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
We stayed in cabin #103- we had read in 'Texas Monthly' that this particular cabin had a great view of the Window. We weren't disappointed. Our back porch looked straight out across the Basin and out the Window onto the desert beyond. This was surely one of the most beautiful views in all of Big Bend National Park.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
For those of you who missed this year's trip, never fear, we already have reservations for December of 1998 !
Monday Dec. 30
Today we began by driving back down toward Castolon to Ward Springs. This is essentially where all the water falling inside the Basin runs out into the desert. In this quiet valley you will find a 300 foot waterfall and a pool lined with maidenhair ferns. Quite unexpected in this arid desert area. Later in the afternoon we took a hike to the bottom of Buro Mesa Pour-over. This turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, though the Upper Buro Mesa hike looks promising.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
Wolfgang & Ursula met us at our cabin for dinner and a shower. They struck me as the type who would seldom pass up either a hot meal or an indoor shower, especially after living out of a Volkswagen camper for three years. We treated them to a Texan dinner of chicken fajitas and wine from our very own Messina Hof Winery in College Station. They repaid our hospitality with stories of their three year sojourn. They even had pictures of their summer in the Yukon. They allowed Kathleen and me a dog-fix. We were both missing our animals and playing with Ursula's sled-dog puppy (60 pound, 9 month old puppy!), Nanook, helped to tide us over until we returned to San Antonio to pickup our dog, Dylan, whom we left with my parents.
Wolfgang and Ursula wisely decided, after a huge meal and several after dinner drinks of hot spiced apple cider and rum, not to make the 1 & 1/2 hour drive back to their camp in Terligua Abaja. They stayed in one of the three double beds in our spacious cabin.
Tuesday Dec. 31
We reluctantly left the Basin and our cabin this morning and drove to our new campsite on the Old Ore Road near Ernst Tenaja. As we were setting up our tents I discovered that we were missing a set of poles for Kathleen's and my tent. I proceeded to drive 3 hours to recover the tent poles that we had left two nights earlier at Terlingua Abaja. Hey, it gave me another chance to say hello to Ursula and Wolfgang. Kathleen and Gay did a wonderful, though strenuous, canyon hike while I was gone. They discovered a new form of cactus we had yet to see in the park. This entire trip we have been cactus-watching. I was amazed at how many cactus were visible once you learned what to watch for. There were areas I could stand in a single spot and spy 20 or more cactus representing a dozen species.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
Tonight I woke from a vivid dream of discovering a new form of cactus ! Unfortunatedly it was a carnivorous, man-eating cactus that grew to be the size of a house. We were lucky to survive... at least Kathleen and I were... Gay, well... he probably gave the cactus indigestion !
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Spiny Hedgehog |
Eagle Claw |
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Young Eagle Claw |
Living Rock |
| Cactus Photos by Bob Brooks | |
The plan for the day was to leave Gay's car at the Ernst Tenaja pull-off and pile into the truck for a day-long trip driving the East end of the Old River Road as far as Mariscal Mine. Kathleen had often spoken of this as being one of the most beautiful areas in the park. We took several hours driving out, quite happy when we were able to get up to 25 miles per/hour. The abandoned quicksilver (Mercury) mine has quite a history and Gay read it to us as we drove along.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
Had a wonderful lunch of summer sausage, jalapeno cheese, honey-mustard and bagels while sitting on a 16 inch wide stone wall jutting 50 feet out from the mountainside and 25 feet above the ground. Gave an impression of sitting in space surrounded by the solitude of the high desert.
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| Photo by Bob Brooks |
Later that evening we drove out to the natural hot springs. We shared the springs with several other college age kids and returned to our campsite at Nugent Mt. thoroughly exhausted, but strangely refreshed.
Thursday Jan. 2
Hit the road fairly early and started toward Del Rio. We stopped and recovered the cactus we had stashed before entering the park. We took nothing from the park, of course, but got in quite a bit more cactus collecting along the way on road cuts and along the highway. By the time we finally left 'cactus country' we had at least 16 species and a couple dozen individual cactus. Stopped at Judge Roy Bean's, Jersey Lilly just after they closed at 5:00 p.m. Stopped to check out the Pecos River canyon. Arrived at Gay's parents home in Del Rio in time for a wonderful chicken fried steak dinner and showers before bed.
Friday Jan. 3
Got up at a decent hour (9ish) and, after a leisurely morning drove across the border to Cuidad Acuna for a bit of shopping with Gay as our Spanish speaking guide. We hit the main Mercado as well as a couple of back streets. Kathleen and I bought a couple of big star shaped lights for our back porch and a long narrow table for our entryway. Just what we needed; another bulky item to fit into the truck for the drive home.
Saturday Jan. 4
Gave the parents a final class on the computer (which Bill, Barb, Kathleen and I had given them for Christmas) and left San Antonio just before noon. Drove as far as Garden Ridge Pottery on the outskirts of town where we stopped to buy over a dozen pots for our new catus. Arrived back in College Station mid afternoon. Time to unpack the car and ice chest before falling into our own... lovely bed.
Sunday Jan. 5
Sunday was spent lazing around the house. Finished unpacking early on and then started potting cactus. We ended up using 25 separate pots. This probably was composed of around 16 separate species and perhaps 35 individual cactus. This more than doubled our cactus collection. All in all, a great end to a wonderful trip.
Our entire trip we had been lucky to have wonderful weather. Our hottest day in the desert was probably around 85 degrees and nights were near 40. Two days after we returned to College Station a major cold front hit Big Bend. Temperatures dropped to near zero with highs in the low 30s. The Park was covered with a layer of snow and freezing rain. We almost called in sick to work and returned. We would LOVE to see the park wearing a mantle of snow !
Links to related WWW sites:
Brother Bill's trip reports:
Caverns
of Sonora Clean-up, Big Bend and points West
(With notes on the Marfa Lights)
Thanksgiving 1994
May 18-22, 1996
