Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona

Emily (scroll down for Dan’s perspective):

We have officially driven from the tippity top to the tippity bottom of the US!

A key long roadtrip tip is to avoid looking at the time as much as possible. This is especially true for your last hour of driving, which can actually feel like about five hours for some reason. Our 8 hour drive to Big Bend National Park in Texas flew by until hour 7. The last hour felt similar to watching any sports game to me - very long - most likely due to the fact I look at the clock every 2 minutes. See photo below of Dan’s typical position when the drive gets tough.

Anyhoo - a few things I noticed during our long drive from New Orleans to Big Bend:

the widest, most pristine highways I have ever seen, big trucks everywhere, gas stations with a zillion pumps, taxidermy stores, and stores advertising their sale of GUNS (always in caps) and sometimes associating guns with masculinity (a common one was signs that had big, muscled arms on either side of them - yikes)

So Texas is…interesting, but also full of good surprises.

Ranches everywhere! Ranches in more urban areas, and ranches in incredibly remote areas. We saw a billboard that said “Need a ranch? Call this number!”, which isn’t something I would have ever thought could be put in the “need” category. We also saw a lot of cows and cow patties. Cows grazing in fields, cows just chillin on the roads, cows chillin near our campgrounds, cow patties on hiking trails.

We also couldn’t pass through Texas without grabbing some Texas bbq, which was super yummy.

I wasn’t expecting the epic-ness of Big Bend. We arrived at our campsite after dark, so it was pretty incredible to wake up and marvel at the landscape. As we drove to the trailhead for the hike we planned to do, we were blown away at how quickly and drastically the scenery changed. From flat, dry dessert to mountainous and green in no time.

The beginning of the hike was a little underwhelming, but folks along the way kept saying “keep going, it’s worth it”, along with complimenting Dan’s signature “party” shirt with palm trees on it that you can see in the pic below.

Well, these folks were right, the views were pretty incredible.

After our hike, we moved to a new campground for the night. The campground host let us know about all the wildlife we might see while camping - and we saw them all! Javelinas (wild hogs), coyotes, and cows that just wander over from faraway ranches. We also spotted Mexican Jays and roadrunners while roaming around (roadrunners are indeed fast).

That night, we followed a nearby forest trail that opened up to reveal revealed tall, green grass and the Rio Grande River. The light from the setting sun reflected on the mountains behind us, creating what the campground host described as a “double sunset”.

The next day, we hit up the Boquillas hot springs in the park. In the early 1900’s a guy named J.O Langford (a settler who was suffering from malaria) drank and bathed in the hot springs water for 21 days, and declared himself cured. We rubbed some water on a pimple on Dans face.

Adobe houses and buildings, big open spaces mixed with mountains, green but almost white grass, lots of Mexican restaurants were some things I noticed as we drove through New Mexico.

Our big stop here was White Sands National Park. In the middle of a grassy landscape, there’s miraculously miles and miles of beautiful rolling white sand dunes.

And, of course, we grabbed some delicious Mexican food afterwards.

Next stop - Arizona! Next, we head to Cochise (pronounced co-chees, which Dan and I were initially pronouncing wrong and are continuing to mispronounce by mistake) Stronghold, located near a town called Tombstone, to get our climb on. This place was beautiful, and felt pretty remote, which is always neat.

At every climbing travel destination, the rock is often quite different. This means that our skills aren’t perfectly transferable from one location to another, and there is always a period of learning. At Cochise, you’ll find granite with an incredible amount of friction. The specific area we climbed at was heavy on slab climbing, which is a particular style of climbing where the rock face is less than a 90 degree angle, so you have to rely on precise footwork and balance. The routes we did were extremely fun, but our fingers and ankles were completely destroyed from the rough, slabby rock. Time for a little break!

Many people have been asking - how are you showering? Where are you going to the bathroom? We have gotten pretty lucky so far. Many campgrounds have showers and toilets. When not staying at a campground, we find showers at community recreation centres, or at beaches. At any point when we find showers to difficult to find, we could always get a Planet Fitness membership since there are locations in most towns/cities - but it hasn’t come to that yet! And for toilets - Walmarts, gas stations, etc. In a pinch, we also have a portable toilet in the van, which we used in Cochise quite successfully!

That’s all for this week! More Arizona adventures to come!

Dan:

Texas went by pretty quick. We drove across most of it as quickly as we could. After New Orleans, we were ready for a break from the city and we were able to snag a few last minute campsites at Big Bend national park so we booked it there as fast as we could. We did stop for some BBQ at some point on the drive though and it was definitely on point.

Big Bend was really cool. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did. As you drive across the park, the landscape continuously changes with bigger and more interesting mountains and cliffs. I also was surprised how huge it is. It takes over an hour to drive across the whole park. We didn’t have any service while we were there so it was nice just relaxing and being in one place for a few days. We did some nice hiking there and saw some magical sunsets. Would definitely recommend it if you’re in the area.

After leaving Big Bend we looked into make stopping in El Paso to do some bouldering at Hueco Tanks. It’s not my favourite style of climbing but it’s supposed to be the best in the world. Unfortunately though we weren’t able to snag any of the limited daily passes as the area has become very protected. So we just kept driving on to New Mexico!

On that drive Emily bought some Jalapeño LIME flavoured chips at a gas station. And let me tell you Ms. Vicky’s and Kettle brand are just wrong only offering Jalapeño. The lime kick would make them 100x better at least. We spent the night at a campsite with some really nice views. We also got greeted by the campsite host telling us they had hot showers there! Big win for us to get clean after hot Texas sun. Overall great campsite except for a sketchy angry man in the bathroom shaving his whole body at the sink.

The next day we took a quick visit to White Sands national park. It was pretty cool to just walk around in this seemingly random sea of white sand dunes. It seemed like a nice family spot with kids on sleds going up and down the dunes. Once we were done, we headed to Arizona to Cochise Stronghold to finally start the climbing portion of our trip.

The drive to the Stronghold was pretty bumpy and rough. The inside conversion of the van does not like bumps very much so the whole drive felt like the van was going to break. It sounded worse than it really was and we made it in just fine to a very starfilled sky.

The climbing at the Stronghold was really really awesome. You camp at the base of the rock and there is just an immense amount of climbing you can do there. The granite is super high quality and had so much friction. The first day we did a 5 pitch climb called Ewephoria (5.8). It a 5 star climb. Every pitch had something interesting and slightly different to it and it was just pure fun.

The second day we have it a go on a 7 pitch climb called Peacemaker (10a). It was pretty good as well but some of the pitches were a little too slabby for my liking. I still was not trusting my feet and the friction enough to push through certain sections.

By the end of that climb Emily and I were both gassed from the climbing and the hour plus long approach/descent both days. Our feet and skin were killing us so we decided to take some rest days and head over to Tucson.