We had some time before the house would be sold and moved out of, so we decided to do a two week trip in the RV to get a little more experience under our belts. We hit the road to Big Bend.
Texas is big. Really big. Most people know this but don’t fully appreciate it until they try to drive from one side to the other, or the top to the bottom. Since Houston is on the east side of south Texas, to get to Big Bend, we had to travel to a far portion of the west side of south Texas. It took almost five hours on the road to get to Kerrville on our first day. We overnighted at Buckhorn Lake RV Resort just outside of town. (It was fantastic!) The next day, we drove about three hours to arrive Ft Stockton. Ft Stockton RV park was considerably different. The memory of that place will always include Keali falling off of her bike into a sticker plant. We pulled no fewer than thirty stickers out of her hands. And finally, the third day, we drove to Big Bend. Because our RV is too big to take into the camping portions of the park, we ended up spending the week in Lajitas just southwest of the park entrance. Lajitas Golf Resort and RV Park is amazing.
The resort had a grocery store, a cantina, and a restaurant.
The campground was perfect for us. The laundry facility was clean and big and hardly utilized by others. There were loads of mountain biking all around the campsite. We also were able to go hiking in the areas outside of the campgrounds with Gracie. We learned that no matter how much Gracie seems like she is content with hanging out with us, if a jackrabbit goes running across the desert pasture, she will absolutely go chasing it even through the cacti. Oops. No more hikes without a leash irrespective of how far away from civilization we are.
An arch out in the desert a mile or two from our campgrounds.
Another highlight of the actual RV park was that one of our neighbors was a stained glass expert. The kids were lucky enough to get to design and make a stained glass art piece. Learning on the road for the win.
Gil wouldn’t accept cash for the two day lessons, so we paid him in beer.
The national park itself was amazing. Big Bend is unique in that it consists of desert, mountains, and river, all in one.
We did several hikes, the scenic drive, and the kids got junior ranger certified.
The hike up to balanced rock was only about a mile round trip.
Balanced rock is far more impressive in person than it is viewing through some really bad photography:
The finger in the viewfinder is yet one more example of a failing in my life. (-;
Once we had our fill of Big Bend (which was lacking only in that we really wanted to boat across the river into Mexico but forgot our passports), we decided to head to the next door park: Big Bend State Park.
Without question, the state park was even more beautiful than the national park. We did a few hikes that had stunning scenery of the river or of the hoodoos.
There were also loads less people. In fact, we boondocked in the park and had the whole place to ourselves.
Our campsite was amazing. That view is over the top of the Rio Grande and into Mexico.
I’m sure Scott would argue that the highlight of this portion of the trip was trying out the solar gear he put together. Knowing that we wanted to option of boondocking (dry camping without any water or electric hookups), he set out to learn everything he could about a solar set up. Rather than spend $10,000 to have someone else do it for him, he put it together and installed it for a couple of thousand. We were all very excited to see it worked like a champ (after a little problem solving).
It doesn’t look that impressive, but it can keep us up and running in the RV without a generator for most days.
The overall camping and national/state park was a success. We hit the road back towards Houston. We took advantage of the opportunity of hitting McDonald Observatory just outside of Ft Davis.
The experience was more than worthwhile. There was one other family and about fifteen winter Texans on the tour with us. Proud homeschooling moment alert: Several of the other folks kept commenting on how we “must be homeschoolers” and how amazed they were that the kids knew the answers to most of the questions the docent asked. One man laughed and said he was happy our kids understood what the docent astronomer was talking about, because he understood none of it. Maybe we aren’t completely screwing them up after all.
Both kids were selected to turn various parts of the telescope inside the dome.
Our other pit stop on the way home was in Fredericksburg. I hadn’t been there since college, and none of us had ever been to Enchanted Rock. We stayed at our first Jellystone while there and were impressed with all of the activities they offered. We’ll definitely try to hit that particular brand of campsite going forward just for the entertainment purpose. I doubt the ones in the future will include a winery directly across the street that Scott and I can sneak off to again, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Enchanted Rock
All in all, the trip was an overwhelming success. It gave us a good idea of what we needed in the RV (a space heater), what we didn’t need, and what the experience was going to look like. Even the cat handled everything with ease and grace. We returned to Houston both excited and anxious to leave for the next big family adventure.
