Friday 4/26 Amistad National Recreation Area, Del Rio, TX to Big Bend National Park
Del Rio is a rather strange place. It’s a sizeable enough collection of buildings to easily surpass any village, hamlet, or isolated collection of dwellings, and eclipse even many smaller towns. However, it appears to consist entirely of one continuous strip mall. In fact, based on rigorous assessment methodology, its been discovered that the square mileage of town is majority parking lot. Also, it apparently has a fuck ton of spiders. I don’t do well with spiders. For this reason, I slept poorly in Del Rio.
Our morning was nice though. Some loverly planet fitness time, a successful speed run of walleyworld, and a stop in at a Ruby’s gas station and bbq joint. Then we were on the road, because Texas is a rather big place and Big Band hides in its farthest left corner.
The drive was a nice one. We watched hills turn to plains turn to desert. We listened to TPAB with even more deeply appreciative ears thanks to Dissect Season 1, and listened to MBDTF in anticipation of Dissect Season 2 (Again, super super strong rec of this podcast, its great).
The plan was to either camp in Chisos Basin, the most iconic and cozy Big Bend campground, or backpack and sleep somewhere on the South Rim Trail. However, when we called the campground about reservations we found that Chisos was full and the trail closed. We slept instead in Rio Grande Village, the southernmost campsite in the park, right on the river.
We got in with the sun mostly down and the heat somewhere near bearable. We were real sleepy, and by the time quiet hours interrupted our brief jimjams we were ready for the bags. Our sleep should have been great. Instead a javelina kept us up with his best Bullet for My Valentine impression, my insomnia decided to sunbathe, and we found the hard way that we should not have ignored the signs warning us to pitch tent on high ground, since our campsite was in an irrigation zone.
Van-ish 