“As a matter of cold legal fact, Roy
Bean was no more justice of the peace than the first jack rabbit to be met in
Big Bend brush.” Saturday Evening Post,
1939
Carol
writes: After we left Padre Island on the Gulf Coast of Texas,
we spent the next few days at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station where we relaxed
over the long Presidents' Day weekend and caught up on laundry and commissary
shopping chores. We lucked out getting a
campsite there due to a last-minute cancellation which worked to our advantage
when we were in the right place at the right time. It isn’t hard to understand why this
campground is so popular--with its wide-open, sunny sites next to the fishing
piers on Corpus Christi Bay. Adding to
the ambience, there was also a resident family of very entertaining long-eared
jackrabbits.
For the camping
finale to our marvelous year of RV adventures, our plan was to head toward Big
Bend National Park along the Rio Grande River, one of our favorite camping
spots in west Texas. We knew from
experience that we would have a very good chance of experiencing more welcome warm,
clear days before we had to head north to finish out winter at our home in
Colorado.
On the way
to Big Bend, we hopscotched from one Texas recreation site and/or state park to
another, first at Lake Casa Blanca, where the desert plant life of large prickly
pear cactus was starting to remind us of home.
Next, we
spent three restful days at an Army recreation site along the shore of Lake
Amistad, one of the major water sources for the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The lake also serves as an international
recreation area that is managed jointly by the United States and Mexico. Fittingly, “amistad” is the Spanish word for
“friendship.”
There was
something so peaceful about watching the daily trains in the distance as they
made their way across the picturesque bridge over Lake Amistad. Both of us especially liked the soothing sound
of the train whistles during the night.
In the
campground we had long conversations over three days with two very friendly
couples camping nearby. We were
delighted one evening to accept an invitation from David and Mellie to join
them for dinner at one of their favorite steakhouse restaurants on the
outskirts of nearby Del Rio. It was fun
to share travel stories during dinner with such adventurous world travelers. Incredibly, David and Mellie have been RV
full-timers on the road since 1995, and have served as campground hosts at many
of their favorite places. They have
spent an amazing 12 seasons volunteering their skills at Kenai Fjords National
Park near Seward, Alaska. One of our
most beautiful days on our Alaska adventure in the summer of 2011 was spent on
the waters of Kenai Fjords National Park where we viewed incredible animal life
in a pristine glaciated landscape.
Mellie’s
love of quilting was “right up my alley,” and we talked quilts for a long time. When she showed me some of her recent quilting
projects, I grew green with envy as I marveled at all the space she had for her
sewing machine, in addition to designated closets for fabric stashes in their
large 5th wheel trailer.
As we left Lake
Amistad, we headed along the Rio Grande River and stopped for the night at
Seminole Canyon State Park. Mellie had
told us about a ranger-guided tour of the pictographs in Seminole Canyon, and
so we made arrangements to take the afternoon tour. Al and I both remembered staying at this park
during our 1989-1990 Galus Family year on the road, but neither of us recalled
anything about pictographs in the canyon.
As our ranger-led group headed down into the canyon,
we passed by
this remarkable 17-ft bronze statue of an Indian shaman.
Many of
Seminole Canyon’s most outstanding red and black pictographs were on the rear
wall of a deep rocky overhang high on the canyon wall.
It wasn’t
possible to include any kind of reference object in our photographs to indicate
perspective, but these pictographs were approximately 2-3 feet high;
this scorpion-like
drawing measured about 2-3 feet long.
We thoroughly
enjoyed our lovely afternoon walk in Seminole Canyon, and the Paleo Indian pictographs
were the icing on the cake.
The next
morning we had coffee at a lookout next to the bridge over the Pecos
River—Judge Roy Bean country!
At the Texas
Welcome Center in Langtry, we stopped for a visit at the home
and saloon
of Judge Roy Bean, the legendary 19th century Justice of the Peace
and sole dispenser of law west of the Pecos.
Old photographs of Judge Roy Bean in front of his saloon demonstrated
just how perfectly preserved these buildings have remained from over a century
ago.
The saloon
and the city of Langtry were reportedly named in honor of the British actress Lillie Langtry, who was much admired by
the Judge. I found the simple bar in
the Jersey Lilly Saloon from which
Judge Roy Bean dispensed justice to be particularly fascinating.
The legend
goes that if the Judge found a jury trial necessary, he chose the jury from the
customers in his saloon, and sometimes held court right on the front porch of
the saloon.
After one final
stop in Sanderson for gas, in addition to a few provisions from a “store” that
we were told had “everything,”
we felt
ready to head into Big Bend.
In Big Bend
we camped for three days in the Rio Grande Village campground.
At the top
of my wish list was a day trip across the Mexican border into the tiny Mexican
village of Boquillas. Historically, the
200-300 inhabitants of Boquillas had enjoyed a long period of easy visitation
by Big Bend tourists. In fact, the
town’s livelihood had become very dependent on the American dollars that were
spent on food in their restaurants and on souvenirs in the restaurant shops. After 911, all that wonderful international
cultural exchange came to a crashing halt, and the border crossing remained
closed for over 10 years! Over that
decade many residents left Boquillas, but for those who stayed life could not
have been easy, as we were told that access to Boquillas on the Mexican side is
solely by means of a 150-mile dirt road!
From our
campground in Big Bend, we drove a few short miles to the brand new border
crossing on the American side,
showed our
passports, and headed down the dirt path for a rowboat ride across the Rio Grande into
Mexico.
In our
entire year of international travel, this was the first and only time we
crossed from one country into another by means of a rowboat. We were met by our guide, Gabriel, who led us
on a 1-mile stroll through the sandy Rio Grande floodplain, then on up into
town for lunch.
Although the
temperature outside in the sun was well into the 90s, the shaded patio where we
ate lunch kept us comfortable and cool.
Al’s Dos Equis beer and my bottle of Coke were deliciously ice cold,
and the view
of the Rio Grande River below was awesome!
After lunch,
led by our guide, we took a short stroll through the impoverished, yet proud
dirt “streets” of Boquillas.
Several
times we were approached by very young children who were selling trinkets of
various simple crafts. Houses were very
small,
and the only
means of generating electricity for a lucky few was by means of solar panels. The Catholic church was simple, with no
frills on the inside. Gabriel told us
that a priest comes once a month to say Mass…
The town has
one telephone that is shared by all. Boquillas
has only one teacher, who teaches all grade levels, and one resident doctor and
nurse who rotate in for 2-week stays. Gabriel
was very proud of the new medical clinic in Boquillas that was built by the
Mexican government. The 21st
century certainly hasn’t arrived yet in Boquillas; yet, universal healthcare is
available for those who need it.
Why do we
like coming back to Big Bend, even though we have visited twice before? For us, in addition to the incredibly scenic
desert and mountain beauty, it is the fascination with the abundant animal and
plant life in the Chihuahuan desert. It
is the turtles in the wetlands near the Rio Grande,
the eye-popping
vermillion flycatcher,
the
great-horned owl with its melodic hoots, and the always fascinating javelina at
Cottonwood Campground.
Although technically
February belongs to the season of winter, we found that by this time of year spring
had already arrived at Big Bend. Many
large yucca plants were in magnificent bloom,
and the
Texas bluebonnets (the Texas state flower) along the roadside were especially
lovely.
Big Bend is
largely a park for hiking, so it was no surprise that we were bound to meet up
with some very extraordinary and adventurous fellow campers. We talked with one couple, Don and Gwen, who
were in their 80s, and they told us stories of many backpacking visits to Big
Bend. They had also hiked several
hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail and many miles on the John Muir Trail in
California. It was a delight for us to
meet and talk with such adventurous seniors, proudly still doing road trips from
Pennsylvania in their homemade Ford conversion van with no built-in bathroom or
kitchen. I have stopped voicing that we
had it hard in any way this past year living out of our 23-ft Pleasure-Way RV.
On the way
out of Big Bend, we noticed a Fiat Global
Car parked at one of the lookouts and immediately knew that it was from
Europe. Sure enough, the distinctive European
license plates confirmed our suspicion, and the country designation of ‘D’ told
us the occupants were from Germany (Deutschland). We had a delightful conversation with the
driver! He told us he and his wife had
been touring the United States and Canada for the past 10 months and would be
winding up their trip in mid-April. By
an amazing coincidence, the timing of his RV adventure had just about paralleled
ours in Europe! He had even used the
very same shipping agent (Seabridge) to ship his RV that we had used. What a fitting chance meeting near the final
stage of our adventure! After all, it
was a French family in their own European RV that we met in 2011 while panning for gold along Bonanza
Creek in Dawson City that had first put the bug in our ear to ship our camper to
Europe and see the sights that way. That day on Bonanza Creek we could never have envisioned what a magical year it would turn out to be...
“One doesn’t
discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very
long time.” André Gide
