Big Bend National Park: The Motts go Camping

At the end of September our family went on a camping trip. I wrote about it in my journal, but never had time to post anything about it, because I then went out of town again to Utah (I'll post about that later). Anyway, the camping trip report is really long, so feel free to just view the slideshows if you want. Here it is:

We just got back from our camping trip in Big Bend, a national park clear down in the bottom of Texas (its border is the Rio Grande River and Mexico). It was a lot of fun, and not at all the disaster that I thought a camping trip with five young children might be. We had been planning on going for quite awhile, but kept finding reasons to put it off, so we finally decided to just do it.

We left on Saturday afternoon, because Oliver had a flag football game that morning (they won; he pulled two flags - happy day!). Normally we all go to the games, but this time I stayed home with the girls (and Henry) and got stuff ready. It seems like no matter how much I try to prepare in advance, there always ends up being about 300 things that need to be done the last minute. I had everything pretty much set and ready to go by the time they got home, but it still all had to be packed into the van. I didn't think there was any way it would all fit - our whole front entry and hall was full of stuff. I should have taken a picture - it looked that impossible. I sat down on the couch to nurse Henry, and Daniel magically packed it all in. If there was a contest called "Pack as many things as you can into a seven passenger van with no roof-rack and still leave room for the seven people who have to ride in it and make sure it's all perfectly organized and get it done in about 15 minutes" then he would win it for sure. After that we were off. It was a long drive, but went relatively smoothly. I wasn't sure how Henry would do - it's always hard to do long trips with nursing babies - but he was amazingly good. He seriously was such a champ the whole trip - no fussiness in the car or anything, and even though he normally eats every 3 hours, he patiently waited more than 4 hours sometimes in-between stops. Probably our best travel baby ever.

Big Bend is about 8 hours away from Austin, and we didn't want to be setting up camp in the dark, so our plan was to stay the first night at a hotel in Alpine (a little town 1 1/2 hours north of Big Bend). We stopped in Fort Stockton for dinner (Pizza Hut), and then got to Alpine pretty late. Our hotel was great - a big huge room with plenty of space for everyone. It did smell kind of weird, though, so Daniel cooked up (brewed?) a pot of coffee and that helped a little (we didn't drink it).

The next morning I took all the kids down for breakfast while Daniel re-packed the car. The kids loved the hotel's continental breakfast, and plowed through several helpings of juice, yogurt, and Texas-shaped waffles (with syrup! wow! I don't think Rachel knew such goodness existed). After breakfast we drove down to Big Bend. I was really surprised at how beautiful it was - I didn't know there were such big mountains in Texas. We drove to the Chisos Basin campground and found a good site to set up the tent. We were surrounded by the Chisos mountains, and it was one of the prettiest campgrounds I've camped in. There were deer walking all through the campground, too, which was fun for the kids to see. There were also some of the biggest bugs I've ever seen, which was fun for the kids, too, but not as much fun for me. After we set up camp, Daniel headed out with Tristan and Oliver to do kind of a long hike (we didn't want to attempt to take the girls and Henry on it), so I stayed at the campsite and got stuff all organized and ready for the night (I hate looking for everyone's pajamas in the dark), and then convinced Rachel and Elizabeth to take a nap in the tent. While they slept, Henry lounged on a camp chair and watched me make tinfoil dinners. I sat facing the mountains while I chopped up potatoes and carrots and thought to myself that I've never had such a gorgeous "kitchen window" view in my life.


The boys got back from their hike 3 1/2 hours later, with lots of tales to tell of caves and lizards and tarantulas and Oliver's head getting split open (I'm not sure on all the details, but somehow when Oliver was going into a cave, he hit his head really hard on some rocks which then caused him to fall down on top of more rocks. He later told me that he hit so hard that when they investigated they found hair from his head still on the rocks. Luckily Daniel had a little first-aid kit with him, and was able to close up the split with a butterfly bandage, and it seems to be healing okay. Who needs stitches?).

After they got back from their hike, we decided to use the remaining daylight hours to drive around and explore, and cook our tinfoil dinners later - no campfires are allowed in Big Bend, so we figured once it got dark there would be nothing to do, so we may as well explore while it's light and eat in the dark (with a lantern). This wasn't our best idea ever. Driving around was fun, and we also walked a little path that led to a neat overlook, but eating dinner in the dark was kind of a disaster. Everyone was tired and hungry, and there were mosquitoes and moths everywhere - the moths were attracted to the lantern on the table and kept falling in the food. Daniel and I took the kids down to the bathrooms to get cleaned up and ready for bed, but that was a little scary, too - there was a black widow with a little nest and lots of wolf spiders in the mens' bathroom, and a little scorpion-type creature guarding the door of the women's bathroom. At this point I was starting to think we had picked a camping spot with a few too many crazy Texas bugs.

The first night in the tent didn't go so great either. It wasn't too cold, which I had been worried about (it was in the 50s), but both Rachel and Elizabeth had trouble sleeping. Daniel and I each had little air mattresses, the boys were in sleeping bags on the floor, Henry slept with me (I just held him the whole night), and we tried to fit both girls into the porta-crib that we had brought for Henry. I think they were just too squished to sleep. That, and the fuzzy pajamas that I had brought for them were from last winter, and looked fine when I held them up for a size-check during packing, but were actually way too short and were preventing them from straightening their legs out much. So for a lot of the night Lizza was having major problems and Daniel was trying to keep her quiet (I wasn't much help because I was holding Henry). He finally just got her out of the crib to sleep with him, and things got a little better then. All of the air went out of my air mattress, though, so that wasn't too comfortable. On a positive note, Tristan and Oliver slept soundly the whole night and didn't make a peep, and Henry was a little angel and didn't cry at all. He woke up a few times to nurse, but then went right back to sleep. All in all, we decided it could have been a lot worse (speaking from experience!). And miraculously, they all slept until about 7:30, which was nice.

After we got all ready for the day and ate some cold cereal for breakfast, we drove to another area of the park to do a little family hike to the Balanced Rock. We didn't think it would take that long, so we didn't bring the backpack for Elizabeth, but it ended up being a bit more intense than we had planned. It was pretty hot, and although the hike started out in a flat sandy wash, it got really steep and involved lots of climbing up rocks at the end. Everyone did great, though. I carried Henry in the front pack, and he basically slept the whole time, and Daniel just carried Elizabeth when she needed help. When we finally got to the Balanced Rock, it was really cool. We were pretty high up, so there was an amazing view of the surrounding area. And lots of shade, which felt nice. We all sat down and rested and ate snacks while I nursed Henry, and then we hiked back down to the car. Later that day we did lots of driving around to see different parts of the park. We drove up to the north entrance, and then down to the southern border to see the Rio Grande and look across to Mexico. The river has had some severe flooding the last few weeks, so a lot of the roads to the overlooks were closed.

After we got back to the campground we got dinner started right away (we didn't want to be eating in the dark again). We made Dutch oven potatoes with sausage, eggs, and cheese (I know that's a breakfast meal, but who wants to get up at 5:00 am to cook Dutch oven for breakfast? Besides my dad?). While dinner cooked the kids played around our campsite. At one point Tristan came running up from the bathroom to tell us that he had seen some javelinas (the camp host had warned us the night before to be careful with our food, because every night packs of javelinas would come roam through the campground looking for stuff to eat). Daniel and I both thought Tristan was trying to trick us, though - for some reason he was using his "I'm trying to trick you" voice. Daniel went to check it out, and sure enough, there was a small group of javelinas right by our campsite. They were huge. And intimidating. Like a pack of wild Puumbas from Lion King. I was a little concerned for our Dutch oven's safety. Nothing happened, though. We took some pictures.

We ate our dinner (very good), and then went for an evening drive. We were happy to have seen the javelinas and several tarantulas, but were really hoping to come across a black bear or a mountain lion, which both frequent the park. No such luck. (We found out later that a black bear cub had been walking all through the campground just a few nights before we got there - that would have been so neat to see!)

The second night went much better than the first. Because of my deflated air mattress, I decided to sleep in the car with Henry, which left enough room in the tent for Rachel to sleep in my old spot and give Lizza the crib all to herself. This new arrangement helped a lot. Plus, I put Rachel's fuzzy pajamas on Lizza (they were a perfect fit, which made me wonder how I had squeezed Rachel into them the night before) and had Rachel wear some sweats I had brought for her. I think this also helped. Henry did great in the car, and Daniel said everyone in the tent slept very well. I guess if we're all going to sleep together next time we're going to need a bigger tent.

The next morning we did cold cereal for breakfast again, and then packed everything up. We tried to drive down to another river overlook, but it was all closed because of the flooding. We did one more hike before we left the park. There was an overlook off the side of the road that looked down into a small canyon/dry wash type thing. We hiked down into it and it was really cool. There wasn't really a trail, but Daniel had gotten the idea from the sign that it was a loop hike, so we kept going. After awhile, it started getting more difficult, and it was kind of hard to get around/over/through all the big boulders and volcanic rock that was down there, but we still kept going because we thought at some point it would turn back into a trail and lead back up to the top. It didn't. We got to the end, and we could see the overlooks way up above us, but there wasn't a clear way up. I think we only had one water bottle, and it was getting pretty hot, and for some reason I kept picturing Bear Grylls (from Man vs. Wild) being on a show there and saying "just last month a family of seven was trapped down here, etc." (you know how he always uses examples of people getting stuck places?). Tristan was having the time of his life, though, rock climbing all over the place, and he took it upon himself to find us a path up the side of the canyon. It was a little treacherous, but we all made it. We looked at the sign again after we made it to the top and realized we had definitely not been on the trail. It was fun, though.

After our little adventure we started the drive back to Alpine. Oliver was sick and kept throwing up in the car. We stopped at a little ghost town (Terlingua) outside of Big Bend to empty out his bucket and let him walk around a little. The ghost town was crazy. Oliver thought it was funny because in the little bathroom I took him to there was a sign that said not to flush the toilet because the little town didn't have enough water in their pipes to handle it. We flushed anyway.

After we got to Alpine, we checked back into the hotel that we had stayed at the first night. We got all cleaned up and let the kids play around a little in our hotel room. Then we picked up some dinner (McDonalds for Daniel and the kids, Subway for me) and then drove to the MacDonald Observatory, which is about an hour away from Alpine. We had looked it up beforehand, and thought it would be fun to take the kids there. They had a Twilight Program, where we learned about different planets and stars, and then when it got dark they did a little star party. We were pretty high up on a mountain and there was no moon, so there were no lights in the area - I couldn’t believe how many stars we could see. After awhile it got too late and chilly for the little kids, so I took Henry inside the observatory to feed him and let the girls play around and warm up. Daniel came and got us when it was time to look through the telescopes. They had the biggest telescopes I've ever seen. We got to see the Andromeda galaxy and some star clusters, but the neatest part was looking at Jupiter and some of its moons through a telescope. That was awesome. Even the kids could see it. Except for Lizza - I let her try to look through the telescope, but when I took her down off the stool, she told me she couldn't see it, and then in embarrassment she turned to everyone else in the room and said, "I'm still kind of a baby", as if that explained why she wasn't able to see Jupiter.

We got back to our hotel pretty late, and everyone went straight to bed. The next morning I took the kids down for another huge breakfast while Daniel packed the car. Oliver threw up again at the table. The people at the hotel were so nice about it - they kept trying to help him, and even bought him some Sprite to sip. He appreciated all the attention. It was funny - nobody really knew what to think about our huge family. They thought all the kids were super cute, and they were "oohing and aahing" over each of them. Rachel and Elizabeth were entertaining them with big stories about all sorts of things.

Oliver recovered and we all got in the van and started for home. We stopped at Fort Stockton for gas and to feed Henry. Daniel took the kids into the gas station and let them each choose 2 things (Daniel remembers getting to do that as a kid, and it's a fun tradition to carry on). They each chose a drink and a treat, and we said they could eat/drink them whenever they wanted during the long drive. Oliver took this as a challenge to be the best saver, and barely touched his treats. When we got to Fredericksburg (about an hour and a half from Austin) we stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at a little Mexican restaurant, which was fun. Then we drove the rest of the way home, unpacked, and sent everyone to bed.

Daniel and I were both surprised at how well the long drives and the camping with all the kids went. We really loved Big Bend, and it was a wonderful trip. We're so glad we decided to go.