Arrival at Big Bend National Park

We left Del Rio, Texas on Wednesday, December 14 and drove US 90 to Marathon, Texas and then took 385 south to the National Park. The night before we left we had a nice sunset and a full moon. I just wanted to include these two shots to remember the beautiful evening. Kim loves Christmas and just had to put the lights on the trailer, even though we were only staying two nights.

As we drove along US 90, we came to the Pecos River. There is a nice canyon there and we stopped to take a few pictures. I can see why they talk about the law west of the Pecos. This would have been a significant barrier before this road and bridge were built.

We knew there was an RV park just outside the north entrance. We decided to go into the park first and stop at the visitor center at Persimmon Gap and we are glad we did.

We talked to a nice volunteer and he told us about the back country camping opportunities. We could camp at any of the available sites for up to 14 days for $12. That has to be the best deal in any of the National Parks. We chose Hannold Draw, which is right off of pavement, but is hidden from the road by a bluff. It is a horse area and has a stall, but is plenty large for our rig. We got our permit that would start on Thursday. We decided to go back to the RV park called Stillwell Store and stay just one night. We will fill up water and head back into the park on Thursday and get set up for a week stay with no hookups in the middle of the dessert. The views were pretty nice at Stillwell, the park is just a cleared piece of dessert, but it sure was quiet. The cost was $20 for Water and Electric and they had WiFi. No cell signal as expected. 

We got going on Thursday and filled every available container with water. When we arrived at our site, we were surprised that we were adjacent to a maintenance area. Not the best scenery, but we did feel very remote. We could hear a car on the road, but they do not come by often. The amazing thing is we have 3 bars of 3G Verizon, but of course no OTA TV. Here is a shot of our home for a week.

Here is our view of the Chisos Mountains from our site:

We also have a view of Sierra Del Carmen out the other side.

We went to the visitor center at Panther Junction that is only about 5 miles from our site and talked to the volenteers about paddling and hiking in the park. Then we watched the movie. We just love those movies and this one was very well done.

We sat outside that first night and enjoyed the sunset over the Chisos Mountains and then the beautiful stars along with Venus and Mars. I have never seen Venus look that bright. This is one of the darkest places in the country. The moon came up a little after 8 and was spectacular. 

It was warm those first few days, but we knew a front was coming in that was going to bring some much colder weather. We knew that if we were going to paddle it needed to happen in the first two days. The best sections of the river are two day floats. I would really like to do one, but I was just not ready to camp in a tent on the river at this point of our trip. We decided to focus on the hiking this trip and save the paddling for another time. We will be back!

I am going to break this visit to BBNP into a 3 entries. There is just so much to see and do. I have taken a bunch of pictures and I will get them sorted and try to keep this as concise as possible. I can tell you now, we LOVE Big Bend National Park. It is an amazing place that much fewer people have visited than the other major parks. We will start the tour in my next entry.

Garner State Park

We left Lake Corpus Christi State Park on December 7. We drove about 180 miles to Garner State Park. It was a nice day for a drive through south central Texas with nice sunshine, about 75 and no wind. The forecast for the next day was for a big cold front to come through dropping the temps to near freezing.

When we arrived it was obvious that this was not like any of the other State Park's we have been to. They had 4 check in windows and over 500 sites. We were told this is most visited SP in Texas. On this day, it was just me and one employee. The place was almost empty. They had a major part of the park closed. This is the slow season, but they were full just a week ago. We had our choice of sites and settled on site #12. It is a long back in with a huge rock bluff out the back window.

Garner State Park is known for two things. First it is the Rio Frio. The Frio river is a cold clear river that is a favorite playground for people in this part of south Texas. There was no way we were getting in the water on this visit. The second thing is the many miles of established hiking trails. I was planning to hit as many of those as I can.

As soon as we set up I decided to get out and walk around while the temps were still comfortable. I was able to walk right up to this wild turkey. I later found out it is a Rio Grande Turkey, that is a particular strain of the wild turkey. I would see these guys throughout our visit.

I then walked down to get a look at the river. It is a beautiful clear cold river.

The water is so clear because the area is all limestone, which provides very little sediment.

The front arrived as predicted. When I got up, the outside temp was about 37 degrees.
After going for a short walk outside, I decided that it was perfect to take a walk in the woods. I knew there was some significant elevation. I put on my hiking boots and camelback and headed out. I started with Wild Horse Creek Trail. It was a nice trail that wound through the woods and then went straight up the bluff.

At times the trial was nice and easy and then it would get rocky and very steep.

I walked by the old gate that was built by the CCC. This park is also a CCC park, just like the last place we stayed. The rock work is unmistakable.



I think this is one of the high points.

A few views from up there. The bluff in these shots is Old Baldy. There is a trail that goes to the top, but it said it was very steep. The stuff I had been climbing was steep enough.

You can see part of the original campground in this shot.

There was a small cave called Crystal Cave. The trail got very steep right around the cave.

Here is a shot back up at Old Baldy from the old campground. It is called Oakmont and Pecan Grove. It is a pretty congested area when the park is busy and would not be my favorite place to camp. As it turned out I liked the site we were in as much as any in the entire park.

They have an old pavilion that was of course built by the CCC.

I then walked back to camp along the river completing a 4.5 mile hike. I worked hard enough to never get cold.

We hung out and played on our computers because this park has zero Verizon Signal. And no OTA TV. They have very weak wifi at the visitor center, but the speed is almost unusable. I can't believe it would work at all when this place is full.

The next day, I went for another hike out in the flat area. I did another 4 miles, but it was much easier. I had fun checking out birds and other animals. I walked through the part of he park that was closed and it was very nice. That would be my second choice for a site in this park. I did see a Roadrunner.

I saw a different section of the river that is very interesting to look at.

While we were there, we had this group of 14 turkey just hanging around the park. I guess they are smart enough to know where they are safe. I sat in my chair in the trailer just watching them. I really didn't have anything better to do.

The park did get a bit busier on the weekend, but the weather kept most people uncomfortable camping in a tent.

We ended up staying 5 days. We liked this park, but it just had a strange vibe. It was kind of like going to an amusement park when it is closed. The strange thing is that even though there was only about 10 rigs in the campground, the State Park Ranger was on patrol through the park almost constantly. We decided to go into the town of Leakey to do laundry and he pulled me over because I don't have a plate on the back of the truck. (That is just the way Missouri does it) He was very nice when I explained and he didn't even ask me for my license. That is the first time I have been pulled over for that in all of our travels. He told me that he was just looking for something to pull me over. He wants to talk to as many people as possible to make sure there is not illegal activity. He said that they were close enough to the border to be a bit more aggressive.

We Left Garner SP on Decemeber 12 and drove to Del Rio. We decided to stock up before we went into Big Bend. We stayed at a nice little RV park on the edge of the Armistad National Recreation Area. It was called the Holiday Trav-L RV Park. It is a Passport America park and was $14.50 per night. There is some $4 per night camping around the lake, and it looked pretty nice, but we decided to move on. This NRA is a cooperative project between the US and Mexico. We were only 10 miles to Mexico. We did have a couple of nice sunsets there.

We left Del Rio today, December 14 and drove to Big Bend National Park. We did not have any kind of reservations and were not sure how it was going to work out, but I had a back up plan. We ended up scoring a back country campsite, large enough site for us, right off of pavement. The cost is $14 for all 7 days. Our first night is Tomorrow. We are at Stillwell Store and RV park tonight. They are very close to the north entrance of the park. We will see how we do out in the dessert all by ourselves. It may be a week or so until I post again, but the visitors center has WiFi and it is not far from our campsite.

Lake Corpus Christi State Park

We left Mustang Island SP on Monday, December 5. We had one thing to take care of before leaving the Corpus Christi area, so we chose a short trip for our first day back on the road.

We had a tire on the trailer that was “cupping”. I have had good luck with Firestone Transforce HT LT tires, so I went to a Firestone store to get their opinion. After some discussion, I decided to rather be safe than sorry and had them replace two tires and place them on the rear axle and move the rear tires to the front. To document this for myself, I replaced the two tires that I had purchased in Joplin about 3.5 years ago and put the tires I had purchased in Denver on the front axle. I am guessing that I got about 30K miles out of those tires. They had plenty of tread down the middle, but the edges were wearing.

That whole process took about 2 hours and I was happy that we only had about 50 miles to get up to Lake Corpus Christi SP. We had been watching the weather and knew that Thursday was a bad travel day. A major front was coming in with wind a much lower temps. We decided to just stay two nights and make Wednesday our travel day. We looked over the sites and really liked site #11. The problem is that I had made a reservation for three nights for a full hook up site. A FHU site is all the web site would allow me to reserve. Site #11 is a Water and Electric only site and is $5 cheaper. The problem is that Texas State Parks charge you a $10 fee to downgrade your site. Is that a stupid rule or what? You also have to pay a $10 fee if you shorten your stay. The good news is the system will only charge the fee one time, so we went for site #11 and shorted our stay. Not a big deal, but it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I just hate making reservations.

We were in an area of the park that was very empty and we really liked being alone after being in tight parking for the past 40 days. Just as the sun was setting, we saw deer in the field behind the rig. I got this shot our the back window.

I got up on Tuesday and wanted to get some exercise. I took a 7 mile bike ride through the park. I was surprised by the amount of hills and it turned out to be a pretty strenuous workout. I stopped during the ride to check out the pavilion that was built by the CCC. Lake CCSP is one of the many parks in Texas that were originally built by the CCC in the 1930's. Here are a few shots of the lake and the rock work.

Rock water fountain

I got back to the rig and it was time to go to work. We wanted to give the entire rig a good cleaning inside and out to get as much of the effects of the salt air removed as possible. I took my motorcycle off of the back of the rig and cleaned it and rode it around the park to make sure all was working well. I plan on getting some use out of the DR in Big Bend NP.

We worked for most of the day. When we were done, I was very pleased to have that completed.

After dinner, I convinced Kim to take a walk to see the the pavilion. We got to the pavilion just as the sun was setting.

Our stay was brief, but we liked Lake CC SP. There were many deer to see and I even saw a pair of green jays.

With the weather coming in, we got up on Wednesday, December 7 (A date that will live in infamy), hit the dump station and hit the road to Garner State Park. We have been hearing about this state park for a long time, but had never been there. Come back to read about our adventures at the most visited SP in Texas.  

Wedding Time

I have not posted to this blog in about a week. We have been very busy with doing things before the wedding of our niece. The wedding is the main reason we have stayed down along the Texas coast for the past 40 days.

We have been staying at Mustang Island State Park for the past week. This park is OK, but not great, but it served its purpose. We think it is a bargain at $120 for 7 days with water and electric. We have very good Verizon Cell service and good OTA TV from Corpus Christi. It is only about a 10 mile drive to good shopping. It is also about 10 miles to Port Aransas, which was the location for the wedding.

Here is a nice sunset shot to show you the very basic site setup.

It is really just a large parking lot with back-ins all along the two sides. Here is our site.

There is no view of the gulf or the beach. You have to take a short walk to get to the beach or the two rock jetties. Here is the view out the back. The gulf is just over those grassy dunes.

The first part of the week was spent fishing and crabbing - No surprise there. I tried to fish off of the jetty, but the surf was up and it was not productive.

I decided to go to the back side of the island and try to do some fishing and crabbing in fish pass. Here is my setup to try to catch some crabs.

I had the company of this Great Egret most of the day.

I ended up catching 5 crabs. They made a nice dinner.

The second day I fished, I was gifted with a large trout. The guy had fished too long and was late for work, so he gave the fish to me. It also made a nice dinner. I fished for most of the day and did not catch anything to take home. This day it was a large Blue Heron that kept me company. He was fearless, he would just walk right up to me.

I wish I could say it was my witty conversation that kept him close all day, but it was that large fish that he had his eye on. After I cleaned the fish he took his prize and flew away.

I fished one day with my FIL Richie. We had fun, but did not catch anything to take home.

Here is FIL Richie playing Santa for the kids. 

Here are a few family pictures from the wedding for my family members that read this blog.

My nephew Eric with his twins Walter and Caroline

My wife Kim, Aunt LaLa looking great and SIL Erin - Mother of the bride

Ryan, Navy Pilot and Groom Ben, Beautiful Bride Daisy, Eric, Halle and Corey

I just love this next shot. Bill and LaLa have gone through a big health scare over the past three years. The good news is they are doing well and all looks good. It was great to see them back to good health and having fun. Bill is an excellent dancer.

Bill and LaLa having fun - It was great to see

The wedding was good and the reception/party afterwards was epic. Kim and I danced all night. That was the most fun time I have had at a wedding...EVER!

I wanted to include a couple of shots of this small class A. This is for you Dad. Check it out, this may be what you are looking for:

We ended up spending 38 nights along the coast. We had a short walk to the beach at all of those sites except Goose Island, but we were right on the bay there. We ended up spending and average of $18 per night during that time. I am really pleased with that.

It is now time to head west. We will go at our usual slow pace. We are shooting to be in Big Bend for Christmas. We are planning to be in Quartzite the end of January to meet up with some friends and see what that place is all about and then on to California. I can't wait to see where we end up along the way.