Go West!

I'm a poor lonesome cowboy,

But it doesn't bother me.

(Lucky Luke)

The hustle and bustle of Austin feels far away. We slowly roll through the hilly landscape west of the capital, where the traces of German immigrants are even more visible than in the beer garden where we spent the previous evening. Near the "Marktplatz" of the small town of Fredericksburg, we stock up on coffee and gas and continue on our way. We wonder whether the rapidly falling temperature makes it necessary to try out our four-wheel drive. With the temperature dropping to 3°C (yes, we are still in Texas), we finally reach Interstate 10, this endless highway which connects Florida and California and crosses Texas once. We stay on this road for hours and watch the landscape slowly change, becoming rougher and more barren.

The light changes abruptly. The gray interstate sky gives way to bright sunshine. At Fort Stockton, deep in the deepest Texas, we start the last leg of our journey for today. There is no room for the historic Route 66 on our trip, but at least we now know Route 67, which leads us to our destination for today, the small town of Alpine. There we come across dozens of absurdly large pick-up trucks, at least as many cowboy hats, two petrol stations, one restaurant, one tire shop, one tractor repair shop and (really) one university. And our hotel. At any moment, we expect the Daltons or Lucky Luke to come around the corner.

 

We spend the evening in the city's leading restaurant, enjoy the honest, good cuisine and check our food and water supplies for the next day. Because we plan a longer tour.

Early in the morning, the Texan desert is foggy and cold. Even Alpine suddenly feels far away, and so is every other trace of civilization. We don't see another vehicle on the road for almost 100 kilometers. Vastness, emptiness, silence. And from time to time, banks of fog that barely allow us to drive at a normal speed appear out of nowhere. It doesn't matter, because sometimes, we drive above the fog and marvel at the enchanted light of the deep south.

Sun, fog, silence: the morning light on the way to Big Bend National Park is a bit shy.

We are getting closer to our destination, mile after mile, bend after bend. A drastic speed limit is our signal that we have now made it to the border of the Big Bend National Park. This park is named after a bend in the Rio Grande, which also forms the border to Mexico. Here in the Chihuahua Desert, there is a whole lot of nothing. "Splendid isolation" is the park's motto, seclusion its most obvious characteristic.

What we do find is a well-equipped information center with friendly rangers who provide us with information and maps, so we eagerly set our iron horse in motion again and are determined to discover the remotest parts of this remote protected area.

Already the very first stop is a borderline experience. A small hiking trail into a canyon that forms the border between the USA and Mexico begins right next to the Rio Grande. We take in the landscape and history and continue through the park. Striking rock formations, cacti and again and again: vastness. Along the way, a roadrunner crosses our path, and later a coyote. We keep walking through the desert and moving through the park's different areas.

The rock on the left belongs to Mexico, the rock on the right to the USA: borderline experiences in the park.

In view of the incredible emptiness of this region, we start to think: what does an international border really mean in a place like this? Don't Mexican cacti look the same as the Texan ones? Why do people always go to great lengths to distinguish themselves when the "other" seems particularly similar to themselves? And wouldn't the idea of a cross-border park, jointly managed, as Roosevelt had already imagined in the 1940s, be the right model for this empty wonder of nature?

 

Endless vastness.

In the late afternoon, it's time for us to head back to our temporary home in Alpine. We pass a police checkpoint and calmly roll through the middle of nowhere. Until two black dots rapidly cross the road. We take a closer look at these dots which are now hiding in the bushes, are grunted at in horror and have just made the acquaintance of two "javelinas", a common type of wild boar in the region.

Alpine suddenly seems surprisingly urban to us. We fill up the rental car and think about turning our backs on the Wild West again. But we still have a lot planned for Texas: more stories are coming soon!

 

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Good to know

The tourist infrastructure in the Big Bend region is not particularly dense. The village of Marathon is closest to the park, while the town of Alpine offers a little more life, even though it is around 90 minutes away from the park entrance. We stayed at the Hampton Inn, which turned out to be a solid choice. Probably the most positive surprise in Alpine is the Reata Restaurant: uncomplicated, friendly, local cuisine.

The Big Bend Park itself is easily accessible by car and well connected via various roads in the park. Please note: not all roads are asphalted, and depending on the road conditions and weather, a serious four-wheel drive may be required. If you only have one day, you should at least take the "Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive", which leads directly to the Rio Grande. Up-to-date information and the required day ticket are available at the Panther Junction Visitor Center and often also on the website of the U.S. National Park Service.