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The baby aspirin years

~ Ms. Boice falls in love, travels and eats her way through life in the post-40 years.

The baby aspirin years

Tag Archives: Mountains

Keeping Big Bend a secret

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Ms. Boice in Trips

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Big Bend, Mountains, National Park, nature, photography, Texas, travel, vacation, Wildlife

 

My out-of-office message on both voicemail and email said I was on vacation and “unplugged.” My boss knew how to get ahold of me in an emergency, but I warned him that I may not get his messages immediately.

Big Bend National Park is in the middle of nowhere. It’s a you-can’t-really-get-good-cell-service kind of nowhere. It’s 3G cell service in that southwest corner(ish) of Texas and even then, you’re lucky to get two, maybe three bars. And when you do, don’t be surprised when you get a text from your cell carrier saying “Welcome to Mexico where you’re going to enjoy roaming internationally!” because the only thing separating you from Mexico is the Rio Grande, which, by the way, you can easily cross on foot with the water not going past your ankles.

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Trust me, this is the Rio Grande.  (At Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park.)

So yeah, getting ahold of me on vacation was going to prove difficult because my phone was in “airplane mode” and yes, I really was unplugged.

When I say, “middle of nowhere,” I mean it.

You aren’t going to see Starbucks, McDonalds or a Subway sandwich chain anywhere around Big Bend. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of those for several days. This is Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote country. Its palette of brown earth, cyan skies and the occasional red or yellow bloom is empty of the droves of people you find spattered over other Big Daddy national parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion, Bryce and Grand Canyon.

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Tunnel near Rio Grande Outlook (Big Bend National Park). Tell me, doesn’t this remind you of Road Runner?

We were at the park during peak season and still, there weren’t the crowds you’d find at other national parks. I remember my first trip to Yosemite back in 1995 and people were at every turn. Tent sites were staked within feet—not yards—of each other and trails were so crowded, you would bump shoulders with others on the trail. Imagine what it’s like walking around Times Square in Manhattan or along the Las Vegas strip—that’s what hiking the trails was like in Yosemite.

Even lesser-known parks, like Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming would have clusters of hikers on the popular trails, passing each other quickly whether coming or going like in an airport as people are scrambling to make their connecting flights. I remember hiking behind a man on one of the trails as he talked on his cell phone and I wondered how the hell he got any cell service in that area while also thinking, are you kidding? 

And same for those aforementioned parks, Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon. All fantastic parks with geology that your mind has trouble taking in at first. Hoodoos, red rocks, big ass canyons in the earth, and an ominous hike called Angels Landing. These are some of my favorite places on earth, but the problem is everyone else seems to also want to see them.

What we need is a park that either people don’t know about or one that is not particularly easy to get to. That’s where Big Bend National Park comes in.

If you enter at Big Bend from the west—via the scenic FM170 highway—you’ve already been given a preview of the mountains. But that drive is only a snippet of what’s to come. That snippet, by the way is called Big Bend Ranch State Park and it has a whole bevy of activities to do for the adventurous—back packing, mountain biking, and horseback riding.

Back to Big Bend National Park, though.

Shhh. I’d rather no one else know about Big Bend.

Honestly, I’d love it, though, if you’d just keep this find between us, okay? Please don’t tell anyone about the acres of Ocotillo cactus, with its skinny tentacles reaching toward the sky. If you’re lucky like us, you will have arrived in the springtime and you’ll drive past fields of these with red flowers adorning each branch. Close up they look wonderfully delicate as they reach up to the sky in a “jazz hands” sort of way. At a distance, when you see acres and acres of them altogether it looks like a red haze laying on top of the horizon.

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Ocatillo cactus with its fiery red flowers.

Also keep it on the down low about the massive Santa Elena Canyon that’s been carved out by the Rio Grande over the course of 2 million years. The sheer, vertical walls of the mountains on each side of the gorge reach 2000 feet. Right now you can easily cross it by foot, but most people—when there’s enough water—will raft it, following it on to the nearby town of Lajitas. There’s a 1.7 mile (round trip) hike, which is mostly on paved stairs that will take you to great vistas of the Santa Elena Canyon.

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Santa Elena Canyon (Big Bend National Park)

Don’t tell your geologist friends either. They’ll start coming in droves because the geology of Big Bend is complex. It’s a mix of sedimentary basin with significant faulting and volcanic activity, which means you’re going to find elevations in the park ranging from 2,000 feet above sea level to just over 7,800 feet. And all makes for a variety of unique bio zones contained just in one park, which leads me to the next thing that is awesome about Big Bend: birding.

Big Bend contains the most species of birds than any National Park in the U.S. That would be 425 birds, making it a mecca for birders. This was really the reason why we were at Big Bend National Park on this trip. We were a few weeks too early for the elusive Colima Warbler, but we weren’t disappointed in what we saw.  (Oh, and fun fact for your next dinner party: High in the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park is the only place in the U.S. where you would find the Colima Warbler.)

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Birding Chisos Basin. (Big Bend National Park)

Also, be sure to not say anything about the fantastic wildlife here at Big Bend, especially the Carmen Mountain White-tail Deer, which don’t seem to mind if you’re standing or hiking two yards away. They’re not hunted and so they’re not wary of humans.

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Carmen Mountain White-tail Deer

Promise me that you’ll keep Big Bend National Park a secret—especially from those in the office. The last thing you need is a Starbucks or McDonalds with WiFi out here. To unplug is to get away from the madness. Right now Big Bend is far from madness.

It’s pure happiness. Purely unplugged.

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Viewing the “The Window” from Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park.

 

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Thank you, Utah.

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Ms. Boice in Trips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arches National Park, Austin Texas, Culture, Life changes, memoir, Mountains, National Park, personal essay, religion, Salt Lake City, Utah

IMG_3747

I drove across the border from Utah into Colorado unceremoniously. I half expected a big sign pleading, “Hey Lisa, we’ve had 19 wonderful years in Utah. Please turn around and come back” as if, like a desperate lover, trying to make one last attempt to change my mind about leaving.

It’s not you, Utah. It’s me. Things change, but I still love you.

You throw your hat in the ring and BOOM! You actually land that promotion you applied for at work. High fives with the husband and then you realize–

We’re moving. The kind of moving where you have to move your house, leave your friends, leave your hair stylist/frizz tamer/color wizard/therapist. Leave your favorite restaurants, your class at the gym (even though you’ve been on the back row for years), and leave the brilliant it-just-makes-sense street system, laid out like missile coordinates.

I thought I would be crying as I drove with the majestic snow-covered Wasatch Mountains in my rear-view mirror. I wouldn’t have them any longer to keep me humble and remind me that I’m small and the rest of the world is bigger than me. They’ve been my companion of 19 years in the arid high desert and even though I don’t ski I will miss them something awful.

Utah is plagued with a misunderstood reputation. Of the nearly two decades I spent there, I rarely saw a polygamist and had probably the most diverse set of friends I’d ever had–representing different lifestyles, races and religion. It’s not to say that Utah didn’t have room to grow and mature. When I arrived fresh from California I was accustomed to eating alone in a restaurant. The first time I asked for a Table for One in Utah the hostess froze, not knowing what to do with me. I thought she was going to offer me a consoling hug and whisper in my ear, “It’s okay, honey. I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”

Now I can easily go into a restaurant alone or even see a movie alone and everyone else seems to be okay with that. Time changes perspectives, and while Utah isn’t a big coastal metropolis like New York City, LA, Seattle or San Francisco, it’s been growing up.

Utah has been a growing experience for me. It’s an interesting clash of cultures when people who feel more sophisticated than a city come to town. I was one of those. I probably spent my first year with a lot of eye rolls. “Geez,” I would say to myself. “They call this sourdough bread?” I thought I was too sophisticated and polished for Utah. Little did I know it would polish me.

I eventually found that I could spend years trying to prove (to no one, really) how much more awesome I was than Utah or I could fall madly, deeply in love with the state. And that’s what happened.Log Haven

I got married here and we celebrated our new life together with friends and family in a tucked-away historical restaurant in the nearby mountains. I didn’t find my husband here (I had to go to Scotland for that), but we dated long distance for two years and when he’d come to town he took my hand and dragged me to the obvious wonders I was ignoring–Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Antelope Island. All in my own backyard, but I was blind to them all because I had been so concerned about what was different from where I had been before.

Bryce Canyon

Utah is different. But so is every place else when you really think about it. And I’m not just talking about the geology or terrain. People will be different, customs will be different, and the DMV will be different. But that’s okay. We all can’t be the same, otherwise, there’s no reason to travel to different places. What made Utah different made me different than I was before I landed there. It made me lose the chip on my shoulder and helped me understand that while my viewpoint is different than some in Utah I had value and perspective to offer. I didn’t argue, I discussed. I quit rolling my eyes and started seeing. I found other voices like mine and we shared. And I also found a sameness I didn’t think I’d find.

Actor Ty Burrell (of TV sitcom Modern Family) and his wife call Salt Lake home and expressed exactly what I’m trying to say here, when he wrote in Huffington Post, “We didn’t realize the incredible impact that having the differing viewpoints of both the religious and secular populations of Utah would have on us. So many cities are actually mono-cultures and Salt Lake has an inherent diversity that’s not always apparent.”

You see, this mix and diversity is so delicious. And most people don’t even see it.

Utah was the third state I spent significant time. I grew up in Oregon, then spent almost 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area in my 20s, then settled in Utah. Now I’m moving to the south to Austin, Texas, which seems to be a conglomerate of all those places I lived previously.

Already I’ve found Austin to be very different. For the life of me I can’t tell how to get around on the street system here and I miss the mountains of Utah that always helped me know how to navigate direction. Some here call themselves hippies and others call themselves very conservative. But everyone calls me ma’am and says “howdy.” I like all of that.

Though it hurts to break up, Utah, please know that you will always be in my heart. Thank you for 19 wonderful years.

Wasatch Mountains

 

 

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The Accidental Birder

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  • When in Isla Contadora
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