Many of our trips (RV and international) start with a seed idea (e.g., visit Alaska, take a photography workshop in the Italian Dolomites), and then we add activities before and after. The seed idea for this winter's Ciaowagen trip goes back to 2017 when we traveled to South Carolina with our youngest son Sawyer to see the total solar eclipse (it was amazing). While that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, we thought it would be nice if it could be a twice-in-a-lifetime experience, and we circled April 8, 2024 on our calendars. In April 2023, we made two campground bookings for the 2024 eclipse near San Antonio and Austin. Ultimately, looking at the track of totality, we decided that Austin (actually the town of Leander northwest of Austin) would be our best choice.
Then, when planning out the actual trip, we added visits to Baja, California, and Florida to the trip (as well as points in-between), knowing that we wanted to avoid extreme cold and snow.
In our last blog post, we'd made it to Las Cruces, New Mexico, just north of El Paso. Another long driving day ensued, taking us to Big Bend National Park, which sits just above the Mexican border and the Rio Grande River in a remote corner of western Texas. We'd visited Big Bend once before, in the fall of 2020 as part of our tour of national parks that had closed in the early days of the pandemic but re-opened later in the year.
Big Bend NP is large, with several distinct sections including near-vertical canyons on the east and west sides and a mountain range in the middle.
We spent three days exploring different areas of the park. On our first day, we visited the east end of the park. We'd decided to visit the small town of Boquillos, Mexico, which sits right across the Rio Grande. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcment) and the National Park Service staff a small border crossing. After passing through with our passports, we walked down to the river and paid $5 each for a roundtrip rowboat trip (we probably could have waded across, as drought has made the river only knee-deep, but thought we'd support the local economy). Boquillos is more than 150 miles from the closest Mrxican city and depends pretty much on tourism from Big Bend to support its economy.
We could have taken advantage of a ride on a burro or in the back of a pickup truck, but decided to walk about three-quarters of a mile to the village, which boasts small outdoor souvenir stalls and two restaurants. We bought a couple of trinkets and ate at the restaurant which offered more authentic Mexican food (unfortunately, more to come on this choice...).
After crossing back over the Rio Grande and passing through the Immigration and Customs checkpoint, we drove to nearby Boquillos Canyon. Along the trail, we passed a "pop-up shop" where people from Boquillos had crossed the Rio Grande and left trinkets and food with a can where you could leave payments. Though technically illegal, it seems to be a common practice in the area.
While along much of Big Bend's southern border the Rio Grande meanders through flat countryside...
...at Boquillos Canyon it passes into near vertical cliffs.
As we drove into the park the next day, we could see the desert flowers were beginning to bloom.
We drove all the way through the national park to Big Bend Ranch State Park (our first visit there) which sits to the west. It is also quite a large park, and we took two different hikes. The first was on the Hoodoo Trail (hoodoos are rock towers where softer rock underneath has eroded, leaving a larger, harder rock perched on top, seemingly hanging in the air).
We saw some beautiful ocotillo bushes, which look like dead sticks when they're dormant but which spot bright red flowers at their ends when they're not.
We also saw some prolific hedgehog cacti.
We did another state park hike on the Closed Canyon Trail through a narrow slot canyon leading down to the Rio Grande.
At the eastern end of the state park, the Rio Grande passes into a 13-mile-long canyon called Santa Elena. Returning to Big Bend National Park, we visited the other end of Santa Elena where the river emerges. When the water is high (it wasn't when we were there) this is a favorite route for rafting and kayaking trips.
There is a trail that climbs partway up the U.S. side of the canyon (on the right in the picture above) and into it for about a half-mile.
On our final day in Big Bend, we drove to the Chisos Mountains in the center of the park.
The mountains, which are volcanically formed, ring around a large basin in the middle. There is a visitor center, a lodge, and a campground.
We hiked the Chisos Loop trail, which afforded us different views of the basin and more beautiful desert plants. We also spotted a roadrunner.
A break in the mountains called "The Window" allows water from the basin to spill out into the desert below.
It was time for us to move on again, and we drove all day to reach San Antonio. We'd visited San Antonio in March 2020, after the country had shut down for COVID. The number one attraction in San Antonio is its famous River Walk, where a bend in the river has been transformed to an area of shops and restaurants that sits below the level of the downtown buildings. We'd visited the River Walk in 2020, but it was a ghost town then (as seen in the photos below).
However, we did manage to find an open CVS on the River Walk where we scored a large package of toilet paper AND a thermometer - rare finds at the time.
2024 was a completely different story. We visited the River Walk on two different days to stroll and dine, and it was chock full of visitors.
We took a ride on the gondola boats that ply the river.
We paid a visit to the Alamo, which had been closed off in 2020. Unfortunately, all we were able to do at the time was to post a dad joke photo on Facebook.
The Alamo's iconic building is a church where the last stand against Mexican forces took place.
We moved on from San Antonio and drove to the town of Leander, TX, which would be our base of operations for the April 8 total solar eclipse. We'd had to make that campground reservation a year in advance! The campground was full, with a waiting list.
Our son Mace flew in to join us. Unfortunately, about this same date Jeannette began to run a daily fever, with lots of fatigue and some gastric issues. It ended up taking about two weeks, two visits to urgent care, a round of antibiotics and two weeks of a bland diet before she was back to normal. So, while we all enjoyed the eclipse together, much of the time Jeannette spent sleeping and so Doug and Mace explored Austin together.
On Saturday, we got together with Zach, a college friend of Mace's who now lives in Austin. We had lunch at a great Tex-Mex place and visited an open house at a local micro-brewery.
Afterward, we drove toward downtown Austin and walked along the banks of the Colorado River (NOTE: this is a different Colorado River than the one that flows through the Grand Canyon. This one ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. Near Austin, the river has been widened and tamed by damming.)
The next day, Doug and Mace drove to the University of Texas campus to visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. The building, of brutalist design, is quite imposing on the outside. The museum exhibits were quite interesting and illustrated how Johnson, the consummate politician, got things done.. Doug had forgotten just how broad Johnson's Great Society social reforms were (e.g., we have him to thank for Medicare).
Monday, Eclipse Day, looked at first to be a washout, with heavy cloud cover predicted.
Nonetheless, we set ourselves up outside in comfortable chairs and with our eclipse glasses at the ready.
We could see glimpses of the sun from time to time as the moon slowly covered it.
Miraculously, a large opening appeared in the clouds less than five minutes before totality and we had an unobstructed view until about 10 minutes after.
Jeannette and Doug were very thankful, as this was Mace's first total eclipse and likely the last one the two of us will see! It's hard to describe the sensation of wonder and awe you get during totality, with a pure black hole in the sky surrounded by the white, filmy corona. We even saw a pink prominence on the sun's right side.
We celebrated that night with filet mignon, cooked sous vide style in the RV. The next day we packed up and drove (with Mace) toward Houston for his flight home. We parked at a Walmart close to George Bush International Airport, and an Uber took Mace the rest of the way.
We overnighted at a Cracker Barrel in Sulfur, Louisiana (ironically, we'd stayed at that same Cracker Barrel on our way west). The next morning at 5:30 am our phone alarms went off with severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. We grabbed a couple things and waited out the storm in the Cracker Barrel porch while a deluge fell and thunder filled the air. Fortunately, no tornado came near. An hour later, as we walked back to the RV, the parking lot had filled with at least six inches of water, almost up to the top of the rocker panels on our car. Luckly, there was no water in the car and once the storm had passed we gingerly used the RV to pull our car out of the "lake" in the parking lot.
We then drove on to New Orleans for a two day stay at a campground right on the edge of the French Quarter, the most historic (and popular) part of the city.
The last time we were in New Orleans was in March 2020, and the national COVID shutdowns occurred right in the middle of our visit. Bourbon Street (the Times Square of the French Quarter, for those of you who haven't been to New Orleans) had barriers preventing people from entering. These days, it's back to its boisterous self.
As Jeannette was starting to feel better, we walked into the French Quarter and watched ships pass on the Mississippi...
...visited funky shops...
...and had beignets and chickory coffee at the famous Café du Monde.
We discovered, to our surprise, that our visit overlapped with the annual French Quarter Festival, and spent time in crowded Jackson Square listening to music, including a terrific performance by Judith Owen and Her Gentlemen Callers. Owen is Welsh but an amazing blues singer.
And yes, it was time to move on again, this time for a three-week visit to Florida. More about that in the next blog entry!
Comments