Alpine and BIG BEND

  Alpine, Texas, United States
Friday, October 3, 2008

San Antonio marked an invisible dividing line on our road trip. Throughout our first month, the main focus had been on "visiting" things - visiting buildings, exhibitions, museums and all things cultural. Now, instead, the focus would shift to "viewing" things - admiring all of the natural beauty of the Western half of the USA.

Ranch country

The chihuahua desert

And what a landscape there is on the first leg of this scenic part of our tour. It is immediately breathtaking. Rolling hills covered in golden grass and dotted with deep green trees and shrubs. Some of the fields house cattle and every few miles we pass the entrance to another ranch - clearly marked with a big gate and a sign hanging above it, detailing the name of the ranch along with, in some cases, a little decoration in the way of paintwork, metalwork or an American flag. Many of them also proudly display a sign out front, along the roadside, clarifying their stance in the forthcoming elections: Texas is Republican country and the McCain-Palin duo will be able to rely on a great many votes out here.


As we drive further towards the middle of nowhere, the scenery changes every twenty or thirty miles. We crest a hill and the next section of countryside is suddenly much greener, the land around us covered with short, pine-green shrubs. Then a line of rugged mountains appears on the horizon, taking on a blue-green hue from a distance and then, as we draw near, changing colour to yellow, brown and red. The mountains here were created in two stages and before the ground lifted up the second time, it was all underwater, submerged under a great, big sea. So the sedimentary rocks are beautifully layered in different colours and at the peaks of the mountains they can be seen as exposed cliffs, sparkling in the sun. Without really realising, we have been climbing steadily and are now quite high up.

Our car, looking at home in the rugged outback

The town that we stay in, Alpine, has obviously been aptly named. It is also described as "the gateway to Big Bend", which is much more of a stretch, since the National Park is still over 100 miles away.


We spent the night in the fabulous Holland Hotel, right in the middle of town. It is fabulous for several reasons. Firstly, because of its name, of course. Secondly, because it is a very friendly and trusting place.

Historic Holland Hotel Alpine

The reception was already closed when we arrived but we were told by a patron of the downstairs bar and restaurant to ask one of the waitresses about the rooms. We did and she promptly produced a list of all of their rooms - room number, description and price. There was quite a selection, so she suggested that we make a note of the numbers we were interested in and go up and take a look: "all of the rooms are unlocked, the keys are on the beds, so feel free to wander about and see what takes your fancy". So that is what we did. We were very nearly tempted to take the "crows nest" room, up a private little staircase in the attic with its own private roof terrace to sit on and watch the stars. But we were sensible and picked one of the cheapest rooms, all of which were very nicely dressed and perfectly comfortable. We returned downstairs to sign in, then dropped our things in our room and sat down in the ground floor bar/restaurant to discover the third fabulous thing about our hotel. The food and drink was delicious. It was a microbrewery, so we were able to try their very own beers. And the food was homely, freshly cooked and very affordable. Laura's choice was a particular winner: cedar wood pork chop. This is pretty much exactly what the name denotes, a pork chop that has been cooked on a piece of cedar wood. And a very clever trick it is true because the pork soaks up the incredible flavour of the wood, becoming both very tender and very, very, very tasty - something to try at home one day! The only down-side to an otherwise wonderful hotel was its proximity to the railway line and the fact that the Union-Pacific trains that came through at several junctures in the night seemed to have a policy of tooting their horns very loudly all the way through the town, presumably to warn people not to suddenly decide to lie down on the tracks. But it was a small price to pay for an otherwise perfect stay - and the hotel did offer courtesy ear plugs.


In the morning we headed for Big Bend, a national park right on the border with Mexico where the Rio Grande makes... a big bend. The park is largely comprised of Chihuahuan desert landscape - cacti, little desert flowers, scattered shrubs and dry, dusty earth.

Harmless desert wildlife and flowers

Desert cactus

In its centre, are the Chisos Mountains where black bears and mountail lions live. In fact, one of the most popular hiking trails in the mountains was currently closed because of a high number of bear sitings. But you could still get onto some of the trails and once we had driven high up into the mountains we walked to the lookout to enjoy the spectacular views. Sadly, not only were the bears presenting themselves to be a bit of an obstacle, we had also arrived at a time when the Rio Grande was at a serious flood stage.

View from the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend

Us at Big Bend

This meant that we could not go out on a leisurely canoo trip to admire the gorge - if we wanted to go onto the river, we would have to go on quite a wild and wet rafting trip and the park ranger didn't seem to really recommend that. It also meant that some of the other trails were closed due to flooding, so it would be impossible to see the canyon's from the shore as well. We were still able to drive along to get a look at the river, which was very clearly fast, swollen and muddy.

The Rio Grande, swollen and flowing fast

Once we had done a fair bit of driving around in the park - and as much walking as we could manage in the 35 degree heat - we headed back out, this time hoping to stay the night in Terlingua, on the edge of the park (would be a better contender for the "gateway to big bend" title). But both Terlingua and Terlingua Ghost Town were uninspiring places and accommodation unexplainably pricey, so we returned to Alpine and tried another local offering of food and board: the Oak Tree Inn (very nice) and next door Penny's diner which had an interesting but perfectly edible interpretation of spaghetti and meatballs.