I typically don’t drink any adult beverages in airports or on planes. I figure traveling is one of those times when I want to be mentally sharp and at peak decision-making ability, in view of the various snags and issues that can arise during air travel these days.
Details on the specific SunExpress flight where this happened are sketchy, and there is no information on how extensive the supplies were before the flight took off, or what happened once the passengers on the flight learned that all of the booze on board had been consumed. I’m guessing they weren’t particularly happy about it.
On our last night in Austin, we decided to check out a unique local form of entertainment: watching bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street bridge. The configuration of that bridge just happens to provide an ideal nesting spot for Mexican bats. Every night, at dusk or later–bats being nocturnal creatures–the bats emerge from their perches in those slots you see underneath the bridge and fly down the river to hunt insects.
And, because a swarm of bats flying out from under a bridge isn’t something you see every day, people started to come to view the spectacle. On Sunday night, bat enthusiasts lined the bridge, while we sat among a group of bat aficionados on a small hill facing the bridge. Boats on the river also gathered for a little bat viewing. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere, and as the designated time for sunset neared a great sense of anticipation took hold.
The sun fell and the skies darkened, and people around us kept predicting that the bats would emerge any moment–but instead it just got darker and darker, to the point where you couldn’t see much of anything, bats or otherwise. The Mexican bats aren’t huge creatures in any event, and they aren’t exactly designed by evolution to be highly noticeable at night. We saw a few bats flitting by on the other side of the bridge, framed against a lighted wall, but no large swarm.
It turns out that bats aren’t slaves to the clock, and will leave their roosts under the bridge at unpredictable times after sunset. In short, they come out when they’re good and ready. If they’re especially hungry, the swarm might fly out right after sunset, but if they’re not, they might cool their heels for an hour or two. And the bats don’t particularly care if the humans gathered to watch them are there are not. You’ve got to respect them for that.
We’re in Austin for a short visit, staying in one of the hotels in the downtown area. In these circumstances, one of my spousal duties is to get up first and go down to the service area and get two cups of hot coffee for us. This crucial responsibility inevitably requires me to employ the fine art of coffee juggling.
Coffee juggling involves a few important considerations, and a few even more important skills. The considerations involve exercising judgment on how full to fill the cup from the self-service coffee station, and what additional items, if any, you can reasonably bring along with you and the two cups of coffee. A banana, for example, can safely be carried in a pocket, but a muffin would be crushed in a pocket and therefore must be carefully balanced on a coffee cup lid. This dramatically enhances the coffee juggling challenge, so the question becomes: is a tasty muffin worth it? (The answer, incidentally, is always “yes.”)
The skills kick in after you fill your cups and make your additional food selection. The first skill is properly affixing one of those plastic lids to the brimming cup of java, and making sure it is fully engaged, so it won’t fly off on the return journey and lead to hot coffee armageddon. The next skill is figuring out how to shift the full cups of hot coffee in your hands so that you can safely stab the elevator button, and then do so again when you reach your room and have to fish the room key out of your pocket, unlock the door, and then use one hand to open the door knob while precariously balancing two cups of coffee with the other. The fact that the piping hot coffee has fully heated the paper cups and is probably burning your hand by this point just adds to the challenge.
But if your coffee juggling skills remain sharp, and you make it into the room without a drop or a spill, you can start your morning with a welcome feeling of first thing in the morning accomplishment. With the knowledge that you’ve capably performed your first important task and a hot cup of coffee for fuel, you are ready to face the day.
When I was boarding my Southwest flight yesterday, I noticed one of the pilots just ahead of me. I could tell he was a pilot because, unlike the vast majority of the people in line, who were dressed like they were getting ready to grab a bag of Cheetos, stretch out of the sofa, and watch some late-night TV, the pilot was wearing his uniform: a starched white shirt with the standard epaulets on the shoulders, a necktie, black slacks, and well-shined shoes.
There has been a decided trend against the wearing of non-military uniforms in the U.S. over the past few decades. People working in service industries, such as milkmen and gas station attendants, used to wear specific uniforms as a matter of course, but those days are long gone. Outside of the military world, uniforms now seem to be limited to postal service workers and commercial airline pilots. And unlike your basic white-collar office workers, airline pilots never get to have a “casual Friday,” either.
Why have uniforms continued to prevail in the commercial airline world, when you don’t see them much in other places? Obviously, it’s a confidence-building device–you see a person wearing a pilot’s uniform and you automatically think they are capable of flying the plane and getting you to your destination safely.
I wonder: how would passengers react if they saw someone dressed like the guy in front of me on the jetway, wearing crocs, sweat pants, and a tattered shirt, heading to the cockpit?
On our visit to Big Bend National Park, I had to pay an entrance fee. The friendly ranger at the entrance station explained that, because I am officially a senior, I could buy a one-year pass or a lifetime pass. As is always the case with these choices, the one-year pass was cheaper in the short term, but the lifetime pass promised more long-term savings . . . if we actually use it to go to national parks and other federal facilities covered by the pass.
So, what to do? My past experience with lifetime memberships hasn’t exactly been stellar. I remember buying a lifetime membership to a video store in the ’80s, only to see it promptly go out of business, taking my “lifetime” membership fee with it. In this instance, though, you’d like to think that the National Park Service and the national park system will be around for a while–so the issue really is whether you would use your membership enough for it to make economic sense.
After a few moments of reflection, I decided to go for the lifetime pass option. I very much enjoy overseas travel, but I’ve also wanted to see more of America, and particularly its many national parks.
Our visit to Big Bend certainly reinforced that decision. We stayed in one of the rooms at the Chisos Mountain Lodge. The rooms are not filled with frills–ours didn’t have a TV set or internet, for example–but you don’t really go to a national park to watch TV or use the internet in your hotel room, do you? The lodge was in an absolutely beautiful setting, and everyone we encountered, guests included, was incredibly friendly and seemed happy to be there. We enjoyed the fresh air, the rugged natural charms of the Chisos Basin, and some great hikes and exercise, too. I would definitely go back to Big Bend, but it also made me interested in going to some other national parks as well.
So, I’m a lifetime member. National parks, here we come!
Built in 1886, when west Texas must have been a pretty wild place indeed, the Presidio County Courthouse is one of the landmarks in Marfa. It is a beautiful, graceful structure built of native stone, and the bell tower can be seen for miles, thanks to the flat surrounding countryside. I regretted that the courthouse was closed, because I imagine the courtrooms are beautiful, too, and I would have liked to see them.
When we were walking around Marfa yesterday the wind was playing games with the passing cirrus clouds, shredding them into ever-finer wisps, like wood shavings overhead, until they vanished from sight. I liked the combination of the thin, curly clouds, the deep blue sky, the peach-colored courthouse, and the sparse green of the courthouse lawn.
Yesterday Richard and I were returning from a walk around Marfa at about 4:30 p.m. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. There wasn’t much traffic or many people out on the streets.
Just after we crossed the railroad tracks that run through the middle of town we heard a commotion coming from one of the streets we were approaching. Suddenly a group of riderless horses and at least one mule (we think) came galloping down that street, took a sharp right onto our street, and went clattering by. They were magnificent to see, but were unattended and unpursued, by cowboys or anyone else.
At first we thought it might be some kind of event, but it clearly wasn’t. The horses swerved through an area dotted with agave plants, then stopped by the railroad tracks and gathered together, where no one paid them any attention and I took the picture above. Fortunately, no train was approaching and no cars were coming in either direction.
We had no idea what to do in these circumstances, so we moseyed along back to our hotel. When the passed by the same spot a half hour later, the small herd was gone. It apparently was just another day in west Texas.
Our second hike at Big Bend National Park was the Lost Mine Trail. Named for a legend of a lost mine supposedly discovered by the Spaniards somewhere in the Chisos Mountains, the trail is one of the most popular ones in the park. The trailhead is also located quite close to the Chisos Mountains Lodge and the Chisos Basin campground. If you want to be sure of getting a parking space, plan to arrive early.
The Lost Mine Trail is one of the oldest trails in the park. In fact, it’s even older than the national park itself. The trail was created by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that gave young men the opportunity to get paying work building roads and trails. The CCC established the Lost Mine trail in the ’30s, and Big Bend did not become a national park until 1944.
The Lost Mine Trail heads up the side of Lost Mine Peak, taking the hiker upward through a series of switchbacks. You can tell it is an older trail, because logs and in some cases stones have been worked into the trail as you climb the hill, creating a staircase effect. It must have been backbreaking work for the young men of the CCC, who labored exclusively with hand tools and human muscle power. They did a darned good job, because the trail has held up very well and is easy to follow. But be forewarned: there are a lot of steps. After you tackle the Lost Mine Trail, you won’t need to hit the stairstepper for a while.
Eventually you reach the top of the peak, and here is where the trail really gets interesting. You can follow the spine of the mountain for hundreds of yards. If you look carefully at the photograph above, you”ll see tiny figures in the far distance, following the path from one rock outcropping to another. The trail takes you past desert foliage and stunted, twisted trees, often requiring you to scramble over sheer rocks.
As you move along the crest of the mountain, you get a panoramic view in every direction–including down. If you peer over some of the rocks making up the mountaintop you’ll see dizzying drops of hundreds of feet to another rocky ledge, and the valley floor still farther below. The Lost Mine Trail involves more than a thousand feet in elevation changes, and when you reach the top of Lost Mine Peak you can see for dozens of miles. The most distant locations have a characteristic blue shade, as seen in the photograph below and in other photographs taken from the top of the mountain.
On the day of our hike, it was cool and overcast as we started our hike, but we warmed up as we climbed, and eventually a big patch of blue sky emerged to the east while it remained cloud-covered to the west. It felt good when the sun broke through the cloud cover, and the sun’s brightness helped to illuminate the colors and sharpen some of the ruggedness of the rock formations on the mountaintop.
We continued to work our way west along the top of the Lost Mine Peak ridgeline, enjoying some spectacular views and some stunning rock formations. There weren’t any park rangers up there to tell you where to go and where not to go. Hikers were expected to behave appropriately and take due care–which is pretty refreshing when you think about it. You could go as close to the end as you dared, but we didn’t see anyone taking any stupid risks. To the contrary, our fellow hikers on the Lost Mine Trail seemed extremely respectful of the potential perils of the Lost Mine Peak.
We decided we would continue along the peak until we reached the end. We watched our footing and moved along deliberately, mindful of not getting too close to any of the edges. The views were incredible, and it was worth every step.
As we approached the end of the trail and the sun peeked through the cloud cover, the colors became more noticeable. I particularly liked the almost fluorescent green lichen growing on the side of one of the rock faces, as shown in the photograph below.
When we reached the end of the trail, we found some smooth rocks that provided some good natural seating. We plopped down, took a few swigs of water, and enjoyed an energy bar or two as we took some careful looks around at the magnificent western scenery, the craggy rock formations, the mountains in the distance, and the valley far below. If felt like we were sitting on top of the world.
One of the interesting things about the Lost Mine Peak is that the rocks making up the mountaintop have different colors. The predominant rock color was a ruddy red, but at the end of the trail the red was framed by an almost chalky white vein of rock. The red and white color made a nice contrast with the green of the desert plants in the valley and on a neighboring mountainside.
As we got up from our seats on the rocks on the top of Lost Mine Peak and headed back down the trail, we noticed the sunshine highlighting the pastel colors of the rocks on the neighboring peak to our right, as seen in the photograph below. We saw subtle yellows and greens, beiges and tans, as if the hues had been carefully mixed by a master painter on a colossal palette. It was an absolutely beautiful sight–one that happened to be just one of many on a really wonderful trail. I give the Lost Mine Trail very high marks indeed.
We saw many birds at Big Bend National Park. No surprise there: the park ranger explained that the park is smack dab in the middle of the north-south flight path of migratory birds and is visited by hundreds of different species.
A number of different species visited the Chisos Basin campground, where Richard, Julianne, Russell, and Betty were camping. Our favorites were the Mexican Jays shown below, with their brilliant blue feathers and fearless exploration of our eating area. If you want to see birds at Big Bend, have a picnic, or scatter a few bread crumbs.
One our first afternoon in Big Bend National Park, we checked out the Santa Elena Canyon trail. It’s a popular and very memorable hike for a number of reasons.
The Santa Elena Canyon trail is literally at the end of the road. A short boardwalk leads you to a body of water that is part of the Rio Grande River. That’s the river you see in the photo below. The river winds through a steep canyon, and the trail takes you part of the way.
Photos really don’t adequately capture the scale of the rock formations you encounter at the Santa Elena Canyon trail. They are immense, stupendous, monumental sheer cliffs that rise abruptly out of the dry west Texas landscape and thrust directly upward until they seem to touch the sky.
The trail hugs the perimeter of the right side of the cliff, shown above. You cross a dry river bed, scramble up to the foot of the cliffside, then starts heading upward to a trail that follows the river. To the left of the river the rock escarpment towers over you and heads off into the distance, as shown in the photo below. Julianne said, aptly, that the rock formation looks as huge and forbidding at the Wall in Game of Thrones. That gives you a good sense of the scale of the rock formation.
Once you get on the trail, you follow some switchbacks up the cliffside. The trail then runs along the end of the cliffside, with some steep drops down to the river, as seen in the photo below. The trail isn’t incredibly wide, and don’t expect to find any protective fencing; Big Bend National Park isn’t that kind of place. If heights trouble you, this might not be the right trail. I’m not freaked out by heights, but I kept to the inside lane, just the same.
Eventually the trail reaches wider spots along the cliffside, and drops down to the river level. You’ll see some gigantic rocks that have fallen off the cliffside, as shown in the photo below. The rocks are huge and are almost geometric in shape, as if they’ve been mined. The plants you see in the photo below grow along the river and are about six feet tall.
The trail ends at a small beach, seen to the right of the photo below. The cliffside on the left shows layer after layer of different kinds of rock in different colors. On our hike, there was not a breath of wind, and the water’s surface was as smooth and reflective as glass.
I took the photo below at the end of the trail, looking back. The two people give you a sense of the height of the cliffs. At this point of the trail, it was absolutely silent, and even our fellow hikers weren’t chatting. The immensity and grandeur of the place just filled you with awe, and a desire to try to take in and remember the feeling of looking skyward at those cliffs towering above. A respectful quiet seemed appropriate for the moment.
When I woke up this morning, the skies over the lodge at Big Bend National Park were clear, but when I went for a morning walk a ground-hugging mist was pouring into the Chisos Mountains basin from the east. As I watched the mist slowly spilled forward, gradually covering the mountain peaks like chocolate sauce covering the vanilla ice cream in a hot fudge sundae.
The ranger who spoke to us yesterday noted that the Big Bend National Park has many different ecosystems and is full of surprises. The morning mist is just one of them.
The lobby of our lodge at Big Bend National Park includes this curious object, which must be mystifying to every visitor under the age of 50. The phone booth was built into the structure of the lobby, and I assume the National Park Service just thought it was too much of a hassle to remove it. A sign in the phone booth says: “Payphone does not work. For entertainment only.” That made me wonder if people like getting their picture taken in it.
I did actually use the booth to make a cell phone call, because the lobby area gets good reception. Those booths were uncomfortable and cramped, but they still serve their purpose. in fact, I’d like to see more phone booths. Wouldn’t it be nice if people stopped having their loud cell phone conversations in public, and instead stepped into a phone booth so we didn’t have to hear their end of the conversation?
We had a great day at Big Bend National Park today, with some challenging hikes to beautiful areas, a very interesting ranger’s lesson, and fine food cooked on a gas grill. The day was capped by a magnificent sunset, and then the stars came out. It was about as close to a perfect day as a human being can reasonably expect to get.
We’re in Marfa, Texas, on our way to Big Bend National Park for a short visit and some hiking. At our stop in Marfa we are staying at the Hotel Paisano, a famous old hotel. I’m a huge fan of grand old hotels–and the Hotel Paisano definitely qualifies.
The Paisano was built in 1930 on one of the main streets of Marfa, a town that springs suddenly from the vast, dusty, empty plains of west Texas. The hotel was designed by Henry Trost, an architect who was responsible for many of the notable historic buildings in the towns of west Texas, such as Marfa, Marathon, and Alpine.
The hotel is an elegant structure with classical lines and all kinds of beautiful flourishes, like the entrance courtyard with its large fountain, shown above. The foyer of the hotel, shown below, provides an especially warm welcome for the weary traveler, with its wooden beam ceiling, Spanish-style tile floors, stuffed heads, and western touches. It’s a striking introduction to the hotel, and leads gracefully to a seating area with a large fireplace and the entrance to the hotel bar and restaurant.
The Hotel Paisano was the headquarters for the cast and crew during the filming of the 1950s movie Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, and large photos from the filming are found throughout the hotel. It’s interesting to walk the hallways where those Hollywood legends once trod. That bit of history just adds some additional luster to this fine old hotel.
Cruise ships keep getting bigger and bigger. The largest one yet, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, pictured above, is currently on its maiden voyage, having left Miami on Saturday.
The Icon is so immense that it is divided into eight “neighborhoods,” to help people get their bearings. The pools are found in one neighborhood, and the rides and slides are in another. One of the neighborhoods, called The Grove, is reserved for high-roller passengers who have booked suites. It’s at the opposite end of the ship from the slides ‘hood, and has its own pool terrace, spa pool, and restaurants, so the bigwigs don’t have to rub elbows with the slide-riding masses unless they really want to do so.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be attracted to a trip on a floating pleasure palace like the Icon of the Seas. Cruise ship commercials always seem to show people careening down a water slide, so that option must appeal to somebody. Not me, however.
I’m not a big fan of cruises, generally, but in any event I would never want to be on a boat with thousands of other people. I can’t imagine the crush of humanity during the boarding and off-boarding processes. And it seems like the traditional model for a cruise–a calm, stress-free vacation with lots of time for reading, walking the decks, eating leisurely meals, and sunning and snoozing on lounge chairs–has been displaced by a more frenetic model that tries to cram every conceivable activity option onto gigantic vessels.
So, is bigger necessarily better? Cruise lines sure seem to think so.
Webner House 