A Graduate, National Parks, and Gardens of the Southwest
- The Agricoutourist
- Aug 31, 2022
- 18 min read
Koestler and I have been ticking off National Parks since as long as she can remember traveling. She’s just graduated from high school and we wanted to get a few more in before she goes off to college. She promises she’ll finish the list with me but, if I’m being honest with myself, I think she’ll find better traveling companions among her new friends at college. I’m cherishing this last bit of time with her. My sister and best friend, Alice, is joining as well after she drops her children of at camp in North Carolina. It’s a very special trip I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Besides seeing the National Parks, we want to visit Bisbee where Gabe spent a lot of time, and as many Botanical Gardens they will allow me to visit. We are hitting some of the parks in the hottest time of the year and Alice began planning early. Thus, we were able to get rooms at the historical and storied gateway hotels.
East Texas
Our first day we toured Dad’s childhood home in Marshall, TX. and stayed at cousin Elizabeth’s beautiful lake house just outside of Longview. We were treated to a wonderful fire work display from their boat and got a great visit in with all, including Meredith's cute crowd of 4.
Leaving the lake early, we have a full day to just kill time while waiting on Alice. We first stopped in Canton to check out Trade Days, a once-a-month occurrence. After a few hours we were just too overwhelmed and hot to continue but it’s definitely on my list of places to come back to in cooler weather and with a trailer. We weren’t able to see even a pinch of it all but what I saw was a mixture of quality artisan arts & crafts, traditional flea market stuff, and lots of flintage booths to pick through. Not as much high-end furniture as the Round Top Antique Show we try to get to every few years and hosts a definitively different crowd. Leaving Canton, we attempted to tour the East Texas Oil and Gas Museum, still closed - COVID.
In Dallas we spend a few hours at the beautiful Arboretum and Botanical Gardens where they have wine and ice cream tastings as well as musicians playing throughout the gardens. Really was a great experience and a garden that I’d been wanting to see for a while. It did not disappoint. We then download the app for a historical walking tour of Dallas and hop along with this for a bit.
In Fort Worth, we follow cousin Elizabeth’s instructions to eat at Joe T Garcia’s which was fun and authentic. Next, the Stockyards, my favorite eating and shopping area in Ft. Worth. Being Sunday, after 5, and 103 degrees outside forces us to lobby squat at the Drover Hotel bar for a few hours while waiting for our third traveler arriving around midnight. After a successful snag we complete the final leg of the day arriving to our little Air B&B in Waco around 1 am.
Poppie and Rye in Waco, TX is the cutest little spot for us to regroup and celebrate the 4th while exploring Magnolia and the other shops popping up. Koes had been here before and was a great tour guide. So cute and truly unique shopping. I purchase a loom so I can learn to weave in the car (not likely) and a few things for Koes’ dorm room. We do a little geo caching and tour the parks of Waco followed by a visit to the site of the Branch Davidian compound at Mt. Carmel. Koes hadn’t heard of it but of course Alice and I will never forget the constant, 51-day coverage of the event. Dinner found us at the Slow to Rise Pizzeria on the river to watch the fireworks at the stadium.
After two nights in Waco, we started our southern decent towards the least visited N.P. – Big Bend. The back country roads took us past more ranches with their branded welded metal entrances, windmill farms, oil rigs, into the hills and out again into desert/mountain terrain.
We even picked up an extra passenger –Tumbling Tia. Tumbling Tia will become a chandelier in my classroom to use as a discussion point when studying the dust bowl. Tia also had a few hitchhikers that made themselves known one at a time over the next several hours.
This was our longest driving day so far, and after 7 hours we were glad Alice thought ahead and made dinner reservations at our hotel, The Gage. The Gage kicked off our historic hotels of America angle of our trip and it didn’t disappoint nor did our dinner.
We spend the next day enjoying spa services and the pool at the Gage. After a walk to the beautiful, sweltering botanical gardens, we meet at the French Grocer to load up on supplies. We were told this was one of our last opportunities for any type of luxury (like gas and wine) before heading further south into Big Bend N.P. That was a warning to mind. We also pick up the Texas Mountain Trail Passport book. Completing the passport requires the ambitious traveler to stop at all the old hotels and other stops of historical significance in this most southern end of Texas for a stamp. Then one mails it in for, according to Santiago, whatever Texas merch they have lying around. Santiago lets me stamp my own book while walking away mumbling that all the stops use the same stamp. I thumbed through the book and assured myself these were places we were likely to go, stamped the required 20 and mail it in. Maybe we’ll have a fun surprise when we get home. Probably it’ll be some pretty good stuff as Santiago said he’d never stamped one before so my expectations are high.
https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/destinations/north-america/murder-terlingua-texas/
Our next stay is a vintage camper park (3 campers) in the ghost town of Terlingua. It’s not a total ghost town, but close. We like to research all the crime, specifically murders, that occur in the small towns we stay in. Personal safety concerns initiated this preemptive habit but it’s gotten a little more sinister as the trip rolls along. Terlingua is a place people come not to be found. Like for real. We were told that it’s known as an impossible place to get an accurate census count here as no one wants to exist. Between that, the raft guide lifestyle, and its disconnect from just about everything, some strange things are certain to happen. Searching for “Terror in Terlingua”, we discovered the Terlingua ‘ghost town’ murder of the La Kiva bar owner.
Arriving at our little vintage camper ‘Betty’, we unpack and get dinner out just in time to see the sunset over Big Ben followed by one of the most beautiful night skies I’ve seen in a while. I love desert sunsets. Koes and I have fun recalling our last good desert sunset in Great Sands NP a few years ago. We were glamping and pulled our blankets into the sand to star gaze.
Tired, being in a camper with views all around is definitely the best choice we could have made for this stop. There aren’t that many hotels in Terlingua that make us reconsider Betty but there were some other really unique options such as teepee’s, yurts, bubbles, and tiny adobe houses. The host of Betty says in the high season (not summer) he has 90% occupancy.
We wake up early to make it to the Big Bend Visitor Center where we were to meet our guides by 9 to then be shuttled to the launch site on the Rio Grand. Our guides, Joe, Tara, and Maria have been down to the river to scout the water level and velocity and determined, while it was faster than they’ve ever seen on this section, we were going. We load up 2 canoes and 2 kayaks and launch off. Joe stays behind to meet us at the pick up spot. With Mexico on one side and the US on the other, we cruised down the Rio Grand. It is incredible, especially getting into the section cutting through the mountains. Along the way, Tara, a 4th generation area rancher, poinst out all the plants and their uses. Halfway through the journey we pull over to view the ancient pictographs on the US side. Overnight, the river has eroded access to the site so we made a plan to take a short hike over land after we put the boats up. Being on the river, it’s easy to forget how hot and dry it is, thus easy to forget to drink water. I heard a small voice say “Mom” and seconds later saw sweet Koes pass out on the ground. It’s scary to see your child pass out in the best of environments, but add the heat, the remoteness and lack of access to medical help if anything was really wrong – and it’s totally terrifying. Fortunately she was up in less than a minute and we were able to get her hydrated and back in the canoe. Tara was incredible. She had all the first aid, stayed calm but professionally engaged in getting Koes safe. While this was happening, one of the kayaks escaped from the banks and Tara had to run jump in the river and race to catch it. Apparently she’d also shot of a flare in her swift run to get her medical supplies out of the canoe. Launching back onto the river, Tara waves at three fellas on horseback across on the Mexican side and explains this is the mayor of the Mexican tourist town of Boquillas.
Lots of visitors to Big Bend opt to take the ferry and burro over to Boquillas for a quick international day trip. I recall doing this as a child. The 9 of us waiting under a tree on the banks of a muddy Rio Grande for a ferry to come get us while swatting mosquitos. It seemed like hours of swaiting (swatting while waiting) when finally the ferry we’d been staring at less than 30 feet away journeyed us across. They then loaded us onto burros and for about an hour we slowly made our way through the desert. Dad had promised us a big town with a great lunch and shopping, so the hope kept most of us from complaining. There’s an old photo that circulates every few years and it shows a pretty hot group of kiddos riding some pretty tired creatures.
This was back when border town shopping in Acuna and Piedras Negras offered everything an 9-year-old girl could want. With the money we earned on road trips answering Dad’s ‘prize questions’, you could buy all the jewelry, doll house minis, soapstone critters, and so much more. The prize questions were mostly constructed from the historical markers Dad stopped and read throughout the 4 days it took us to get to our little house in Fort Clark, Brackettville TX. [EA4] The other thing we loved about border towns was the meal we’d get with fresh squeezed lemonade and the best authentic Mexican food. So, this was what we imagined our burro trek would end in. I’ll just say it wasn’t something we ever asked to do again as kids but now I wanted to revisit the town with Alice and Koes. If I’d remembered this was the crossing, I would have brought the passports and added it to our itinerary this trip. Something for next time.
Back on the Rio, we still didn’t know Tara had sent up the flare. So, when the Boquillas mayor and his two friends waved at us and asked how we were we just assumed they were out for a horse ride in 104 weather. It wasn’t until we got to our pull-out spot and saw them again, across the river, that we realized they’d seen the flare and were following us to make sure we made it back safe. After a nice lunch we hiked to the pictograph site which hadn’t been accessible from the river.
Returning to Betty, we cleaned up a bit and headed up to the Starlight Theatre for food, drinks, shopping and mainly some darn good people watching. One fella sitting next to us had a large screw partially embedded on the side of his knee. He had been trying to get to the Dr. but his ‘friends’ were trying to get him drunk enough to take it out themselves. Seemed he was just about ready for his cronies operation until a tired and thirsty desert rose came along luring him back into the bar. Terlungia states it is the chili capital of the world and host two chili cook offs a year. Starlight was serving the winner of this year’s cookoff and so we ate some of that and had a margarita as we waited on the much talked about sunset from the porch of the Starlight.
After watching the sunset from the Starlight, we had a nice walk through the Terlingua cemetery.
Most of the desert life is active at night, dawn or dusk. We woke up at 5 to catch the sunrise and see wildlife on our drive out of the park. After packing up and stabilizing Tia the Tumbler, we drove the scenic 170 out of Big Bend along the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. We saw lots of activity and tons of havalenas. Besides Border Patrol, we were the only car on the road for hours – most of the day really. Signage along the way informed us the many movies filmed along the route. These included Contrabando, Giant, Streets of Laredo, and Fandango. Getting of the 170 and headed north into Marfa there was a border checkpoint. The nice fella asked how many and we answered three, forgetting about our 4th passenger. He kindly pointed at the large lump under the blanket and asked, “and who’s this?” to which we responded, “oh, sorry, that’s just our tumbleweed”. He laughed and let us pass after a little peek. So far we hadn’t seen any other tumbleweeds so we were really proud of our find. Well, that changed once we started heading further west. We realized why the fella thought our treasure was funny, for miles there were thousands caught in the fences lining I10. We still think we got the best one.
Next, we stopped at Marfa for a quick tour of Hotel Paisano where the crew of Giant stayed and then lunch at Water Stop. This was also one of the passport stops. We took the obligatory pictures in front of Prada Marfa which has been vandalized so many times they only have right footed shoes, the purses have no bottoms, and the glass is extra thick now.
Out of Marfa, we headed towards Guadalupe National Park where the best view in Texas awaited – we were told. The road to Van Horn passes Blue Origin’s rocket-launch facility, a modern structure that sticks out among the creosote and yuccas. The privately funded aerospace company is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin’s vertical launch-and-land spacecraft and NASA collaborations have made the company a leader in modern rocket technology. The imposing security entrance to the facility features multiple gates, a checkpoint booth, and sleek overhead lighting just off the roadway.
We stayed at the 1930’s El Capitan hotel. Like many hotels and businesses along older routes of travel, El Capitan was forced to close as a hotel with the introduction of I-10. It was a bank for a while but in 2007, was reconverted back to a hotel. She’s beautiful in an old-world Texas/New Mexico way. It’s not luxury but people don’t come to NP gateway towns looking for luxury. Taking a small trip to the grocery, I realized it was luxury compared to the other lodging options available in Van Horn, Texas. I also found the main strip with all of the towns essential businesses. We had a delicious steak dinner in the cozy dining room and hung out reading in the lobby a few hours before bed.
Sitting in the hotel lobby, something felt awfully familiar. It turns out this hotel has the exact same design as the Hotel Paisano in Marfa. Both were designed by the architect Harry Trost. Trost, who trained under F.L. Wright, designed over 550 buildings between California and Texas in the early 1900’s. Most of the buildings in El Paso (near Van Horn) built between 1910 and 1933 were also Trost’s designs.
After leaving Van Horn we took a drive thru Guadalupe NP. If you have time and energy, you can tackle the six- to eight-hour round-trip hike to the summit of Guadalupe Peak, but it was almost too hot for us to even look out the window. For a less strenuous experience, the park’s Frijole Ranch offers several shorter hikes. Frijole Ranch was established in 1876 by the Rader brothers, the first documented Anglo settlers on the southeast side of the mountains.
We did a brief drive thru the park and then headed across New Mexico and into Arizona aiming for Saguaro, NP. In New Mexico, we passed ghost towns (Shakespeare and Shafter), tumbleweeds, more ranches, more tumbleweeds, and towns whose names I recalled from so many of the westerns I’ve watched (Lordsburg was the last stop in Stagecoach). We saw our first saguaro cactus in Vale, NM as well as the first Palo Verde we’d ever seen. This tree is entirely green.
We checked into Cat Mountain Lodge which is just on the edge of the park. This was likely our favorite stay so far. The desert gardens were creatively designed using native plants. Actually, much of the desert landscaping we saw relied primarily on natives. I’m reading the book Bringing Nature Home. The author does a great job articulating the importance of using natives in our home landscapes and outlines simple solutions for doing so. The plantings and bird feeders brought in a great show of deer, birds, reptiles and so much more we couldn’t see just outside our door. Across the street was our little café, Coyote Pause where we ate daily. A small Buffalo Trading Company (off shoot of Buffalo Exchange) made for some fun shopping. The lady that started Buffalo Exchange lives in the area and owns the lodge as well as the Coyote Paws and the little shops.
Saguaro has been on our list for years and driving into them that evening was more than I’d imagined. It now tops my list of favorite NPs. We mostly drove the trails but got out for a small hike to the petroglyphs. I’ve been tracking this ancient art down as long as I can remember and even recall hiking around Hawaii [EA5] so I could get rubbing imprints of them. We attempted to go to the desert museum after driving the park but they now close at 2 as it’s just too hot. We rode around a little longer taking pictures of saguaros with exceptional personalities.
Rerouting into Tucson we ended up at the great shopping center La Encantada where they had every shop any of us could have wanted. Happy to see life again, we went a little crazy. We met up for an incredibly artistic and fresh Mexican dinner at Blanco Cocina & Cantina and had fun sharing our shopping wins. We headed back to our room at Cat Mountain Lodge just in time for another fabulous desert sunset with cocktails.
Before heading out of Tucson, we toured the N.P. a bit more and we spent a few hours at the Desert Museum. We all agree that this was one of the best museums we’ve ever visited.
We headed out of Tucson into Tombstone where we visited a few saloons and enjoyed a stagecoach tour through the well-preserved little town.
Back in the car we headed up into the Mule Mountains to the quirky town of Bisbee, AZ where Gabe spent some of his childhood. The community was founded in 1880, and quickly became a thriving urban center, driven by a booming mining industry that thrived on the area's rich reserves of copper and precious metals. The Lavender Pit is no longer active but they offer tours through the mines in the old mine carts.
We stayed at the Historic Copper Queen Hotel with all the amenities except those crossed out below.
“The Copper Queen Hotel boasts 48 quaint rooms (we had a surprise in our potty) along with seven specialty rooms (haunted). A full-service (never saw a service) hotel in the center of Historic Bisbee. Private baths, A/C, (units) phones (?) & TV's in all rooms, Wi-Fi. Get a bite to eat at the 1902 Spirit Room restaurant (never open)onsite. Cool off in their seasonal solar-heated swimming pool .(closed) Old Fashioned Saloon (never open)for drinks and live entertainment. (nope). “
Bisbee is SO CUTE! We spent two days in Bisbee just shopping at all the quirky little artistic stores and enjoying our last few days together. When I had my vintage campers I would stay at the vintage camper parks as often as possible. There are several around the country and I’ve been trying to get to most of them. Shady Dell in Bisbee was on my list so it was fun finally being able to see it. We didn’t stay here as we wanted Koes to have a pool and inhouse restaurant while Alice and I tried the saloon. You know, all that stuff the Copper Queen said they had. Ok, I’m over it.
That night we took a ghost tour. We always like to take ghost tours when we visit cities because we like to compare stories. ‘Molly’ the spurned lover, for instance, kills her and apparitions herself in much the same way in both Savanah and St. Augustine. Molly didn’t make this tour but a cat ghost and the traditional lady wearing a white dress did. There were some pretty gruesome murders in this town. The tour took a nasty turn when it went directly up to our original room. When we peeped in the potty, the offender was STILL there – a day later! A new ghost? We were also told our 4th floor is where pesky Billy is known to “steal jewelry” ? Seriously, that’s clever!
The weather was some of the coolest we’d had. We began to really appreciate it when we were told to prepare for the lingering 115 degree heat we would find in Phoenix. We also appreciated the cool weather as our water was turned off again at the hotel and remained this way until around 5pm. I don’t complain much but this just did it. I told them they should close and open back up as a youth hostel to which he comped us most of our stay and offered to open the bar at least. I don’t remember my exact spiel, but somehow he determined the closed saloon was my biggest complaint. Guess I’m not over it.
We all had some pretty mixed feelings about leaving Bisbee behind. I’d loved seeing the sweet little town where my husband spent so much time, we loved just being together and slowing down for a few days, and we knew our trip was coming to an end as Alice had a flight out from Phoenix the next morning. I was in charge of GPS so I picked the long scenic route as I was not looking forward to the heat and was now skeptical of anyone offering a pool package. Too, we were looking for this particular stick in the desert that results from a specific cactus once the fleshy outer part begins to decay.
In Phoenix we dropped into a Buffalo Exchange and headed to the historic Clarendon Hotel. There’s a long list of famous people that stayed here since it’s opening in 1975. The building’s exterior is whitewashed with parallel blue lines and the doors are brightly orange–a very mod design. Its interior is out of a “Mad Men” scene that makes you desire to sip a cocktail and listen to Frank Sinatra – one of Koester’s favorites. Too, what’s better than a hotel with a restaurant attached to it? Answer: A GOOD restaurant that serves Mexican food. And that’s exactly what Tranquilos is. The horchatas are perfection, the service was amazing,
Apparently, there was a gruesome murder here too and the guy hasn’t left. The place went into some pretty rough decline until the new owners, wanting to preserve a piece of Phoenix history, took out the meth labs and changed the one hour or more policy to at least a 24 hour stay. Not to completely run off the existing clientele, they did reopen as the first cannabis friendly hotel in Phoenix. This in itself draws a pretty eclectic crowd which was fun to mingle with as we listened to the nightly acoustic music playing in the restaurant/ lounge and looked for celebrities said to drop in.
We dropped off Alice at the airport in Phoenix and headed to our final NP, Petrified Forest. Finally, the temp had dropped from 113 in Phoenix to a cool 93 so we could muster up courage for a few small hikes to see the ancient petroglyphs, checked that park off our list. We end this trip at 22/63 National Parks. The park road running through the center of Petrified Forest popped us onto I40 and we headed to a little town just outside Albuquerque on Route 66. Sunset Motel has been on route 66 is a little family run spot that’s been here serving travelers on Route 66 since 1959. I love these little refurbed art deco motels. They are always a little dated, but to me, that adds to the nostalgia. This happens to be the only historic Route 66 Motel still owned and operated by the same family. In talking to the sweet young lady while checking in, I learned that she and her sister would be taking over the motel in the morning. Later, as I walked the grounds looking at the gardens and tidy planters, all I could think of was how she was going to maintain all this. I also took a few cuttings from a stone crop, a few succulents, da desert sage and beautiful wild honeysuckle. I always travel with a propagation kit and if I find something that won’t compete with our native plants at school or survive outside the GH, I grab a piece and try to get some roots on it. I’d like to say my success rate is at least 50/50, but to be honest, I usually forget to label them once they get to school. This probably accounts for the many times I find flowering strangers in the greenhouses. This, or my mentor Mary has snuck in another plant for the kids and me.
It’s just Koes and I in the car now headed back. She’s driving as I read through my blog before posting. I used to be so much better about writing at the end of each day. It’s the only way to catch the details of the trip. Details I’ll want later when I want to revisit a spot of just an hour. This trip was different though. Koes is leaving for school and she doesn’t even know yet how big her life is about to get. How big her world is about to get and how much her current opinions and views will be challenged, expand, and change as she learns to live in a new town, work with big ideas, learn to manage her time, meet new people, and find her philanthropic and religious niches – ones she chooses. Knowing this, I didn’t find anything more important than being present for every minute of this trip with my middle daughter. I loved hearing her playlist of all her favorite songs she put on Spotify. I’m excited I can listen to this and bring back our trip, and my baby in a small way. I loved shopping with her and learning more about her style. I loved discovering the audiobooks she’s listening to and even the products she uses. Once they get cars, phones, earpods, venmo, and jobs, we lose touch with so much of who they are becoming. They don’t need us to shop with them, they develop their own music we don’t hear, pictures don’t get printed and left lying around the house, they order their own stuff which comes in a sealed box to the door, and there’s no landline for us to vet who’s calling. Re-discovering my daughter in this way is going to make it so much easier to let her go. I am also confident she’s a good interstate and now big city driver and that’s certainly reassuring.
While we were traveling, my second grandchild, little Anne Lewis (Annie), was born on July 14 at 5:45 weighing 7 lbs. Poor Eli, Alice’s little boy, broke his arm at camp and my parents completed a road trip to California. I'm sure that's just a small part of what we missed while away from everyone but glad we stole this time.
It's become my goal in life to be an active participant in one of your amazing travel adventures! Love that you have found a career that feeds your creativity and soul! Keep on keeping on! #oneday