Back in April of this year a friend and I traveled to Big Bend National Park. I'd first made this trip as a child with my father and older brother and sister. That was nearly twenty years ago and I'd always wanted to go back. Plans were made to go sooner but something always seemed to come up. I was close, once, in college when a professor allowed me to accompany him on a collection trip to Lajitas. Though our route took us to the doors of the park we never actually entered.
Actually making the trip happen was that simple: just make it happen. I called Kenny, my best friend of 20 years, and asked him if he wanted to take the trip with me. He decided he wanted in and we started looking at dates. We both had vacation to give so we settled on late April; this missed the Spring Break crowds and came before summer's heat.
In planning the trip I initially wanted to stick as close to our route from '99 as possible. We'd gone earlier in the year and hit Monahans, Fort Davis, the McDonald Observatory, Alpine, Marfa, Big Bend NP, and the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. Kenny and I wanted a little different experience than my elementary-aged siblings and I had. We settled on an itinerary that included Monahans, Balmorhea, McDonald Observatory, Alpine, Terlingua, and finally the park.
Leaving town on a Wednesday after work we headed west on I-20, driving well into the night. The whole drive I was nervous the trip would be a flop. I'd enjoyed my trip to Big Bend as a child, but would I enjoy it now? We stayed the first night in a hotel in Monahans, the only two non-oil field workers there, getting very little sleep.
Next morning we were up early and headed to Monahans Sandhills State Park. This was one of the highlights of my childhood trip and I wanted to see if the hills were as high as I remembered. If you've never heard of them, the Monahans Sandhills are a collection of dunes just outside town. You can rent plastic discs coated in beeswax to slide down them on. It's about as close as Texans ever get to sledding.
We arrive at the park soon after it opened, rented our discs, and hit the hills. In the early morning light the place was beautiful. Being so early in the year the temperature was cool, a slight breeze keeping any uncomfortable warmth at bay. Climbing the hills is much harder than expected, and they were in fact as high as I remembered.
 |
| Monahans Sandhills State Park |
We didn't stay long but both agreed it was definitely worth the price of admission. If anything it served to 're-calibrate' our minds from North Texas to West. We found we were too heavy to slide down the hills with much speed so much of our time was spent taking in the view.
With so much planned, and such a tight schedule, we had to leave the park and head south for Balmorhea.
To be continued...
