Sun, May 1, 2011

Sunday, May 01, 2011

A road trip is an opportunity to change your mind and enjoy the consequences. – Donna Downey

We all enjoyed a good night’s sleep at the Best Western in Alpine, TX.  Our plan was to enjoy the continental breakfast and then hit Highway 90 West to I-10 and then get thru El Paso in the light Sunday morning traffic.  Reality… the continental breakfast went without a hitch and was pretty good.  Then we got on the road and that’s where we soon went astray.  We never saw I-10 but instead after a short stop in Marfa, TX soon found ourselves taking a side trip into the Ft Davis Mountains. 

Alpine is, I believe about 4,000 ft in elevation and the temperatures were cool and the sky was crystal clear so we were lulled into staying in the area. There have been some huge fires in the Ft Davis Mtns so we thought we would take a short side trip to see how it looked.  Note:  Short in Texas is anything less  than 150 miles.  Luckily most of the scenic drive that makes a loop thru the mountains was not highly impacted by the fire.  Most of it was just a beautiful as ever with the majority of the fire to the north side of the scenic drive and on the eastern and southern side of Ft. Davis itself.  In some areas just the grasses and undergrowth had burned leaving the cedars and larger trees.  In other areas that did not have tree cover pretty much everything was burned up.  We did see a few houses in the edge of town that had burned.

After making the loop we decided to head on down to Big Bend and see how the park was faring in the drought.  It was unusually dry but beautiful almost having a winter instead of spring appearance and we couldn’t find anything blooming.  The Rio Grande river was lower than we can remember seeing it but was still beautiful flowing thru Santa Elena Canyon.

We made our usual stop to admire Gilberto Luna’s Jacal (a small, low, house made from slim  poles, tied together and filled with mud, clay and grasses).  Mr Luna lived his entire life there in Big Bend farming with water diverted from nearby Alamo creek. The usually dry creek was the path used by raiding Comanches to attack Mexican villages and settlements.  Gilberto managed to maintain peaceful relations with the Comanches and his fellow Mexicans. He raised a large family, and died in 1947 at the age of 108! We always stop, reread his story and admire the hardiness of the early settlers of the Big Bend.   

The temperatures of the early morning and higher elevations around Alpine and Ft Davis gave way to heat once we were in Big Bend.  We have not taken the drive up into the Chisos Basin in many years so we drove up to the lodge and got ice for the cooler.  The drought seemed more intense in the higher elevations of the basin with the trees looking very dry and stressed.

As we left the basin headed out of the park the wind picked up and we were in sort of a dust storm with visibility very limited.  Not the type that would deter driving but we could just barely make out the mountains in the distance. 

We successfully made another Texas sized loop and have ended up back in Alpine for another night.  Although it might sound from the journal today that it was a dreary day, actually it was not.  It was great to see the Ft Davis scenic drive area had not been significantly impacted by the wildfires and Big Bend is always beautiful even though the spring blooms were nowhere to be found.  In Alpine it is back to the mid sixties and there is the nicest cool breeze coming in our motel room window. 

Our plan, well we know our plans are subject to change, but we intend to enjoy a quiet evening of reading and relaxing and then head out early in the morning… hoping to be thru El Paso before the snarl of the morning rush hour.  Whatever comes to reality… well we will still be enjoying another day on the road.

We are well tonight and hope you all are too!

Peace, Hope & Love,

Donna, Charles, Paris & Dodger