Parque Nacional Grande Curva , Dia Uno

Or ……. Big Bend National Park, Day One

Anomaly is starting to become one of my favorite words to use while we are on these adventures because more often than not, it fits perfectly as a description of places we’ve been.

          Take our present location for example.

          Big Bend National Park is gigantic in size and has way too few visitors here now. There are several reasons for this. Mostly, the location and the time of year. These kind of go hand-in-hand, with an explanation.

          Get out your road atlases and find Texas. It’s the one with multiple pages to display it. Flip to the one for the southwestern part and find the Rio Grande River and trace it until its course makes a BIG BEND and starts to run in a northerly direction, until it takes another turn and starts to flow southeast again.

          That’s it!

          As I’ve said before, there a whole lot on NOTHING in this part of Texas. One really needs to travel to visit this Park, so remote would be a good middle name for it. There is No One here that is just “dropping in!”

          It is now the beginning of October, and their busy season is just starting. The Park’s busiest month is March. I’ve lamented before about the Hot Texas Summer’s and I’m a gazillion percent positive that their popularity is lower than a lizard’s belly in the summertime. It’s 94 today and forecast to be that and higher for the rest of our stay. It is highly recommended that any and all hiking be done early and that you be off the trails by mid-morning. They’ve had more than their share of heat-related rescues over the years. So, that means that you’d better have a stack of DVDs to watch in the afternoon because there are no services of any kind down here, Netflix is not an option!

          All of the Park’s services, such as the further-flung satellite Ranger Stations and camp stores don’t open until sometime next month and they close down in April, so good luck bringing the kids here over your summer vacation!

          After all this doom and gloom that I’ve cast over the Park, our advice is to get here as soon as you can! The hikes are spectacular, and in a way, the remoteness is refreshing.

           We attempted our first jaunt into the hiking world shortly after dinner on Day One. Sunset is around 7:20, so we figured that we had enough time to safely go and return with time to spare. Unfortunately, we put a little too much stock in the description of the hike. It was just at the end of our RV Campground road, where an old ranch had existed in the early 1900’s, irrigation ditches and displaced “Invasive Species” trees abounding. The Ranger Lady advised that it would be a “short hike” past the Daniel’s Ranch, and “There’s a short climb in the beginning and you don’t have to go the whole 3-mile trail, just go to the overlook, you can’t miss it.”

           Here’s where we learned the relative nature of trail terms.

          A good comparison here would be a ski area. There are no standards for rating ski area trails, one may designate the most difficult trail at your area as a Black Diamond. That means that Bill’s Ski Area can designate his most challenging run as a Black Diamond. Please don’t confuse his Black Diamond with one of Stowe’s trails.

          Not even close.

          The beginning of said Trail was easy……. for about 30 feet.

          Then it went vertical, or so it seemed.

          Once we were on the trail I began to have my doubts. We were woefully un-prepared for any emergency, and many lessons were learned after this. 

           We had no water with us. (It was supposed to be “Short and easy”. It was also in the cooler (?) evening.

          We had no helpful climbing apparatus with us. Mind you, there were no ‘technical’ parts to it so ropes, etc. were not needed at all, but we did possess two sets of “Leki Poles” that my daughter Lorelyn had given us. These look like ski poles but are adjustable, have built-in “shock absorbers,” and have two types of tips on them, one rubber and the other carbide, which seems to have the characteristics of Crazy Glue when it comes to adherence on rocks. These are “Walking Sticks” on steroids. They are most useful on the descent, where you place them on the ground before you to use your arms and the “shock absorbers” to help ease the gravity-fed drop when going back down, especially when you encounter a larger than normal “step.”

          These handy devices were safely ensconced back in the trunk, because the trail was “Easy” according to the Lady.

          We also did not have a headlamp because it was “Short”, and we would be back in plenty of time. Except the descent would be on the dark side of our ‘near-vertical’ hill. My headlamp was even safer than the Leki Poles, he was snuggled in a compartment back in the motorhome.

          Needless to say, our short hike to the overlook was not very successful. We did not, in fact, make it anywhere that even remotely resembled the Ranger’s description and we prudently (finally) elected to do an about-face and get back in the proverbial one-piece.

          Which we did.

           We also vowed to be like Scouts and “Be Prepared” in the future.