Big Bend - Part 2

So here are the rest of my favorite pictures from our vacation. Day 1 we headed to the Chisos Mountains and hiked 2 miles through the mountains. It was so beautiful. It got a little chilly as we made it to the top. Taylor's favorite part was Abe giving her his hoodie to wear. The arms hung down so far that she looked like an ape. Everyone that passed her laughed as they realized she was hiding in the hoodie. She liked all the attention. Surprisingly there had been snow the week before in the mountains so a little was still left on the ground. So we had our first Texas snowball fight. The kids thought it was so fun. But we were happy that it was gone by the time we got there and we had beautiful weather every day.

I'm okay if this is only snow we see this winter (or for the next several winters).

We had picnics each day for lunch while we were out and about. I never expected the park to be so big that we would need to pack our lunch before we left each morning.

Abe did a great job fixing some tinfoil dinners one night. This is one step above just doing hot dogs like we normally do. The smores were eaten too quickly to get any pictures of them. Ethan was completely obsessed with meeting people and inviting them over for smores. I have no idea why but he was on a mission. He had grand plans of putting together invitations and mailing them out to people at the different campsites. We did get lucky that in the next campsite over there was a little girl a few years older than Ethan. He invited her over to play and quickly invited her over for smores that evening. She was actually really excited because her family had not brought any smore fixings because they thought there were no fires allowed because of the dry weather. The kids were really bummed that the family was leaving the next day and they didn't find any other kids to hang out with.

We were a little disappointed that we didn't see any of the parks' mountain lion or bear population (okay maybe we weren't that disappointed) but it was fun to see a lot of different animals running around. We saw some javalina at several different places (thankfully we were in the car since they aren't known for being all that friendly). We also had a coyote come through the campsite one afternoon. We also managed to see some roadrunners, deer, a rabbit, and a golden eagle. One afternoon we were sitting by the trailer while the kids played in the dirt and a small bird came very close to them and was watching them looking for food. The kids didn't know what to think of this bird that was approaching them so they all just stood and starred at each other for a long time without moving. We were a good distance away watching and the kids kept glancing back with a confused looked, not sure what to do. Finally Taylor turns around and yells, "We aren't going to touch that bird cause it has a big pecker!" Of course it did have a large beak but her word choice cracked us up.

It was so wonderful to finish up a vacation not exhausted and ready to be home but rather feeling so blessed at the little family we have and special time that we spend together. I'm already thinking about the next adventure. Anyone that wants to join us for some camping near the beach in the spring let me know!

Family Vacation - Big Bend National Park (Part 1)

For the last several months we have been excited about Abe having a week off from work and we wanted to do something really fun. Since everyone says that you can't camp in Texas during the summer we decided to give it a try during the winter. Luckily the base has good rates on renting a camper for the week so we set out finding somewhere to camp. Being new to the area I just looked on the map of Texas and looked for a large expanse of green and ended up finding Big Bend National Park which is right on the border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River. As we put our plans into action we got a lot of feedback from people that thought we had made a good choice and had great things to say about it. Though people did mention it was really far away and in the middle of nowhere (and they were not exaggerating). We had our doubts that we would ever get there with all the stops for gas we had to make (gas mileage pulling a trailer is awful!) But in the end it was definitely worth it. Big Bend is popular for its varied landscape. Most of the park is desert but then in the middle there is the Chisos Mountains, where it was very green and beautiful. Then there are the areas around the Rio Grande River that are completely different too. For the three days we decided to visit each of the different areas. The park is huge so there was some serious driving between points in the park. I took so many pictures that I'm not going to be able to put them into one post so I thought I would break it up into two. But since I loaded these into blogger thinking I would do them all we are starting with the end of the trip and moving forward.

On Day 2 we headed to hike a canyon where the Rio Grande goes through the mountains. We were all surprised that the Rio Grande isn't quite as "grand" as we were expecting. It can be more than a foot or 2 deep in the middle.


These two kiddos can be so sweet when they are having fun together.

Ethan was obsessed with carrying a reed the whole hike and acting like it was a spear. He threatened several other families walking along the way (most of them played along with him).

Taylor was SO proud of herself when she got to the top of this rock. She is quite a climber, just like her brother. Climbing rocks was usually the highlight of our hikes.

Even I can get into a little rock climbing.

After we finished up hiking through the canyon we took a walk in search of natural hot springs along the river. I never thought that it would be as warm enough to even think about bringing bathing suits but the kids were pretty upset that they couldn't get into the warm water. I couldn't get over the fact that some 60 year old man was in the water in a speedo (or maybe his underwear). It was very disturbing.

On Day 3 we headed to some rocks through the desert. We enjoyed a lot more rock climbing.

Here we are, almost to the top of the rocks. Behind us is the path we had taken on our hike.

Ethan at the top of the hike, holding the balanced rock.

Taylor was giving me a heart attack as she tried to follow her brother up the rocks. The drop off on the other side was my concern.

Our second hike of the day was again along the Rio Grande River. I will admit that after reading the warnings on the brochures at the park about how there were routes of drug smuggling and human trafficking through the park I was a little hesistant every time we saw Mexicans on the US side of the border. But we didn't have any interesting stories to tell.

At the end of the hike along the river was a huge sand pile. We did venture up the largest pile but the pile we let the kids play in was at least 3 stories high. It was the kids dream come true, lots of sand and no one telling them to stay clean.

We were finding sand in every crack and crevis in these children for several days. In this picture you can see Ethan at the top of the picture as he made it up the pile. We wore them out GOOD this day.

This picture was from a overlook near our campsite. On the right is our campsite through the trees and on the left is the Rio Grande. In the very back were the Chisos mountains.