We had read about an awesome campsite called Chisos Basin that’s nestled between massive mountains in the heart of one of the biggest national parks in the southern United States. So we called the parks lady to reserve a site. She had no clue what Big Bend National Park is or that it exists. The park, roughly the size of Rhode Island, does, in fact, exist. It’s the first national park in Texas. And maybe it’s a good thing that no one knows about it, because its lack of tourists adds silence to its splendor. Big Bend is in the middle of the Texan desert, straddling a hundred miles of the Texas-Chihuahua-Coahuila border southeast of El Paso. It shares with Mexico the Rio Grande river, which we crossed by boat, and then by donkey, In Boquillas ("200 people, 200 chihuahuas") one day for lunch. Talk of The Wall frightens me.
All smiles in the snow. Big Bend National Park, TX. January 27 2017
Entering the campsite is no easy feat. In between holding his breath, foot to the floor on the brake pedal, Zach turns to me and murmurs that the winding route into Chisos Basin is “the hairiest, scariest, most fun road [he’s] ever driven down.” Tackling that bowl of nature in an ’81 Westy admittedly made me understand why people drive to these parks in pickup trucks with a hitched trailer for sleeping, but traveling how we travel sure adds a lot of excitement. It snowed at night, it was hot hiking all day. This is the desert.