Big Bend National Park lies along the Rio Grande River in Texas. In the old days (pre 9/11), you could cross the river and walk right into Mexico, into a quaint town called Boquillas del Carmen.
The people of Boquillas thrived on all of the park’s tourist activity.
But then our government in all its infinite wisdom, decided that it wasn’t safe for us to mingle with the Mexicans, and outlawed this favorite activity of Big Bend tourists.
Today, Boquillas is dying a slow death. Each day, the locals risk arrest by crossing over to the park, placing their handmade trinkets for sale onto rocks where tourists gather, like at the hot springs.
Then the Mexicans run back over and sit all day long, underneath a canopy of shade, hoping something will sell. They were easy to spot along the banks of the river.
Whenever we soaked in the springs, I felt like such a schmucky American. I kept wondering; why are some of us born into such better circumstances than others? Not that I’m complaining, but still. . .
I’m so fortunate that my grandparents came over from Mexico at a time when immigration was not the issue it is today. In this era, Mexicans will risk their lives just for a few dollars a day to feed their kids. My own family had it’s hardships in the early days, but I’m betting they weren’t quite on the same level as today’s.
Our photos of the cool rig Johan and Dianne de Koe call home started an interesting discussion about this DAF Expedition Vehicle. A few people chipped in saying they spotted the nice couple, and one even researched their specs.
You can do that from the Dutch license plate which, it turns out, may cause trouble back home. If they ever return.
Johan and Dianne have been on the road – primarily off roads – for years. The box they live in has everything you might need. And with a kitchen, bathroom, solar power and plenty of water, they can go anywhere they want, except perhaps downtown.
We met the couple and got the grand tour while boondocking at Lake Amistad, where we sent them off with our maps of Big Bend. They shared with us stories of worldwide travel in their DAF, and how they picked it up for a “bargain” – brand new, after it sat in Dutch military storage for ten years without ever seeing any action.
We’re always on the lookout for cool rigs and campers, so we couln’t resist this photo opportunity at Amistad. Once that is, we realized Johan was not actually the military official we presumed he was before we saw their plates.
So, Bob is provisioning our new dedicated server. Soon I get to learn cPanel and endure the WordPress migration thing for the tripawd blog and move the Simple:Press forums. That means this site will follow. Expect downtime over the upcoming week. Thank you for your continued support.
At 23 years and going strong, the Alpine Cowboy Poetry Gathering is the second oldest in America, just one year behind the much larger Elko, Nevada festival. I’ve always wanted to make it to Elko, but it takes place in January, and being in an RV during Elko’s frozen winter isn’t my idea of a good time. Guess that makes me a real city slicker.
Alpine’s vaqueros though, they know when, and how, to hold a festival for wimps like me. While much smaller than Elko’s, Alpine’s is better in my book. The weather’s awesome, the overall price of attending is more affordable, the performers are accessible, and to me, the atmosphere feels a lot more authentic than Elko, which isn’t the nicest town in the world.
The only bummer is that the poetry and music sessions are held on a college campus, and we wish they would’ve had some in bars or in a campfire setting.
Jim isn’t a huge fan of cowboy poetry like I am, but he patiently endured the festival so he could get a good dinner or two out of it (and he did!).
We both fell in love with the town of Alpine itself. It’s small but not too small, real estate is affordable, and the high desert scenery can’t be beat. We plan on heading back there to look for our winter Texas property in the fall.
Texas is being good to us, and we love it here. Never in a million years did we think we would say this. As native West Coasters, we fell for the popular snotty stereotype about the Lone Star State: that it’s flat, boring, full of rednecks and the only redeeming thing about it is Austin.
Now that we’ve been to the Great State two times in the last year, we just want to say; We were wrong. Sorry Texas!
The most peaceful, relaxing drives we’ve had in the last two years have been along the back roads of West Texas. The land here is as varied and beautiful as anything we’ve seen in our travels. Nowhere else in the United States can you drive through such wide open spaces and see vistas that go on for miles, without a single inhabitant except for a herd of cows. Tall rock formations line the horizon against a deep blue sky, and even if you’ve seen “No Country for Old Men,” Hollywood still can’t come close to replicating this kind of beauty. One visit to Big Bend National Park, and you’ll see for yourself how stunning this country is:
We haven’t been to a national park since saying goodbye to Jerry in Yellowstone. Coming here felt somewhat like a betrayal to our baby, since the last time we set out to do the tourist thing was with him.
But I knew if we didn’t go to Big Bend now, years might go by before we had the opportunity to go again. Since it was “only” 240 miles out of the way from our next destination, the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, and diesel is hella cheap in Texas, we went for it.
Arriving at the park and hitting the trails without him didn’t seem right at first. But after a day of sweating in the blazing sun, and getting stabbed by cacti on the trail, I realized that Jerry probably would’ve hated this kind of terrain, which helped my pangs of guilt to subside.
We are quickly approaching our two year anniversary of being on the road, and we have no intention of stopping. We’ll keep traveling and working seasonally around the country, but we’d still like to park occasionally on our own piece of land.
Our plan is to buy a small parcel in Colorado, and another one somewhere in Texas. Still, we’re keeping our options open as far as locations go. On our way to Texas, we stopped in three towns I’ve heard a lot of good things about.
On our way to Big Bend, we just had to investigate all the hype we had heard about the Mystery Lights of Marfa. We stopped by the Marfa Chamber of Commerce office and asked when was the best time to see the lights. “Oh, any time after dark,” we were told by a pleasant woman. “Any day of the year, really,” she added as we inquired deeper. She was apparently perpetuating the mystery.
We heard you can boondock where the lights are seen most and found the Marfa Lights Viewing Area nine miles east of town right on Highway 90. It’s really quite a nice rest area designed by local high school students, with ample parking, rest rooms, and interpretive displays. We settled in with a front row seat, and waited for dark.
One of the first the first signs that there would be no sign of mysterious lights that night was the half dozen or so displays themselves. They pointed out distant mountain ranges and discussed regional flora and fauna. But only one had any information about the lights themselves. And if you read the small faded printout pinned in the corner of the display case the truth was revealed.
Chances of witnessing the Marfa lights on any given night are quite rare. In fact, based on less than 30 viewings in 2002, your chances of actually seeing any anomalies in the sky after dark are about eight percent. This number decreases with each hour past sunset. But we were determined to try.
The freezing wind finally forced inside after nearly two hours searching the skies for anything other than oncoming headlights. Supposedly, people have reported seeing the lights since the late 1880s. Explanations range from weather related phenomena and human pranksters, to the piezoelectric effects of thermal expansion in quartz of the distant mountains. But we have developed our own theory …
The reports from the 1880s were fabricated some time in the 1970s when interest in Marfa, Texas had fallen. The hullabaloo from the days of George Stevens filming Giant in Marfa 20 years earlier was all but forgotten, and locals needed a reason to bring back the tourists. It worked. They’re still coming now. And they are still told they can see the lights any day after dark. Yeah, right.
Ever since we got our rig, we’ve been fortunate to have a wealth of information at our displosal. I’m not talking about the obligatory gaggle of retired full-timers who gather any time you attempt to back up your rig. I’m referring to our rig’s solar power system.
My brother in law Rich O’Connell is a brilliant electrical engineer. He has grown a successful solar business with my sister, built his own off-grid home, designed multi-gigawatt systems, and patented a solar panel washing system. He also designed the RV power system we rely on for boondocking.
Recently, I got to meet another expert; Solar Mike. He operates The Sun Works from his solar powered rigs on the slabs. Mike knows the DC side of the business and how to get the absolute most out of what you got.
That’s why I was happy to be at Slab City when we considered upgrading our system. I had access to experts from extreme ends of the solar industry. Either one of them could have easily told me I had a bad battery. Which I would have known, and could have avoided, had I been servicing my batteries as they required.
It just didn’t seem like we were getting the run time out of our batteries that we expected. Loving to boondock as much as we do, we explained our issue to Mike and asked him for an estimate for upgrading the system. He immediately discovered one of our batteries was weak, and pointed out how dry it was. Bone dry.
I might have kicked my feet and mumbled a bit, but – don’t tell Rene – I still think it was worth the $95 we spent on two new batteries to have not been pulling them out and checking them every month for the past year. Truth is, we just forgot.
Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.
Had we spent the $4000+ on the original system design Rich gave us, we might have never even had this discussion. But having worked this over with Mike, I now know where in our 24′ trailer we can fit six maintenance free 6 volt batteries – much better suited for our use than the two 12 volts we have.
And having done it a couple times now, I know it’s not such a big deal to pull our batteries and check on them. We even carry some distilled water now so we have it when needed.
I also know now that an MPPT charge controller is where we’ll invest our dollars the next time we complain about our system. That’s one thing Rich and Mike both agreed on – that any Maximum Point Power Tracking charge controller will boost performance performance of our PV array. Then we can start talking about boosting the battery bank and adding panels again.
When we will make that investment is the $3000 question. But that all depends on where we’re going to be purchasing property come Spring, and whether we will need to upgrade what we have or build a larger off-grid system in a shed or trailer. And we’re not even sure where we’ll be next month.
Our friend Dave Berman recently called us “Advocacy Journalists” when describing what we’re doing to raise awareness about canine cancer with our three legged dog movies.
I consider this an honor since Dave taught me the term and was the first advocacy journalist I ever met … until that is, we caught up with Flux Rostrum and Skinny Chef in the Mobile Broadcast News bus.
It was a treat to see these two real videographers in action at Slab City. Partying with them and golfing at Gopher Flats was pretty fun too!
But for those of you who don’t necessarily tune into our video channel on a regular basis, here’s our take on the Slabs.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it journalism, but the playlist below does include five videos documenting slab City culture – from a drive by and a fly over to the Niland Tomato Festival parade, art cars and Salvation Mountain. Enjoy!
Paying it forward …
Our generous friends CoffeeSister and RhodesTer will be happy to know the Verizon wireless PC card they insisted we take has found a good home. We donated it to the Mobile Broadcast News crew to support their efforts of raising awareness and hell online through indie media. We were unable, however, to get a receipt from them for the tax deduction. I guess the good karma will have to suffice.
I’ve been thinking we would catch up on writing about our adventures over the past couple months for a couple months now.
We were in Los Angeles a while, but had plenty of family and holidays to distract us. Then we were boondocking on the Slabs, and well, that’s Slab City for you. We’ve also been meeting up with lots of cool people. Then there was the whole Nature thing, and off to Big Bend, but plenty of distraction time there. Not to mention the Cowboy Poetry Festival! Next we had the NüRVers get-together for a few too many hangover days. Stay tuned for details, we promise.
But now we’re settled in for our first pre-paid full month in one spot. Hopefully the lure of New Braunfels and the Comal River won’t keep us too preoccupied to tell y’all what we’ve really been up to. With that said, there’s something that’s been bugging me …
I’ll never understand how certain outdoorsy types choose to enjoy our natural resources by destroying them. All across America I’ve always noticed the detritus of litter bugs, and done my best to pick up after them. But when we were dry camping in the Mojave we picked up more of other people’s trash on just two hikes than I would have ever dreamed possible.
I hate to stereotype folks, but the vast majority of visitors to Jawbone Canyon are the OHV type. They tear up the hills and dunes on trail bikes and quads, which sound like it could be quite fun in it’s own right. But why must they leave such a mess behind?
Please give a hoot. Don’t pollute. We’ve only got room for so much trash in our rig.
While we’re on the subject, here’s an ironic thing we noticed while dry camping out in the Mojave near a huge wind farm under construction.
We watched in awe as immense turbine blades passed by in convoys of three … followed by dozens of workers, each in their individual cars.
You’d think renewable energy developers might implement some sort of transit for workers who travel 100 miles to the job site.
Big Bend National Park lies along the Rio Grande River in Texas. In the old days (pre 9/11), you could cross the river and walk right into Mexico, into a quaint town called Boquillas del Carmen.
Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.
Please give a hoot. Don’t pollute. We’ve only got room for so much trash in our rig.
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