Texas is an unlikely place for Brian and me to end up on our annual summer trip. Generally speaking, we crave forests and bears so seek out colder or wetter climates during our coveted time off, but the reality is that we're starting to run out of unexplored places in the West - at least in terms of National Park sites. For the first time, we were pushed East.
Many times in preparation for this trip we considered dropping it all and just driving to Montana. It always, inevitably, comes back around to Montana. It was difficult to stick with the plan, and in the end the only reason we may have stuck to it was due to circumstances outside of our control involving transportation. We ended up having to take my mom's little VW sedan and it just won't cut it in the rough back country roads of Glacier, so we were stuck. With Texas.
For what it's worth, Texas did surprise us. Actually, it was the mountains and Chihuahuan Desert landscape of Texas which changed our minds. The rest of Texas can go ahead and keep its distance, but the Chisos and the Guadalupes were beautiful. They ended up being totally worth it.
Our trip to Big Bend was hatched sometime this winter when we watched the movie "Boyhood." You have to watch the entire movie to get to Big Bend's cameo, which is the very last scene of the movie. But when it was over we both looked at each other and knew. We need to go there. It started literally at that moment.
We endured some pretty insane weather, but stayed dry and standing while others around us flooded or flattened out. This was our reward.
