Texas Landscapes

The Guadalupe Mountains rise out of the broad plains of Texas rather abruptly. They begin as rolling hills, but then jut upwards suddenly with granite cliff faces earning them the title of mountains. September is monsoon season in Texas, so the mountains were far greener than Ryan and I could have expected.

We chose a campsite among the cacti, yucca, and twisted desert pines then struck out for a quick hike in Devil’s Staircase before dinner. Because of the rains, it’s more like spring in Texas than fall with fragrant blossoms on cacti and trees alike sending Ryan and me into fits of sneezes. The hike was beautiful though, through a wash that water had carved into a mini slot canyon among the mountains.

On the way back however, my worst nightmare came into reality.

Ryan, who was in the lead, completely missed it, and may have even hit the thing with his shoe, but my eyes were too wary to miss the big, hairy body snuggled into the crack of rock. I gasped, stopping in my tracks and immediately started hyperventilating. Of course I knew we were in this horrible creature’s habitat, we had been for a while actually, but I had still lived in hope that we wouldn’t come across a tarantula – the biggest spider that I’ve now had to see in the wild.

This was actually before we saw the tarantula...

Ryan was of course entranced, and was insisting on taking pictures and throwing rocks to make it move and other boy things while I tried to catch my breath. When he was sufficiently satisfied, and I sufficiently disgusted, we continued back to camp while I prayed all the while we wouldn’t come across another one. We didn’t, not that day…

That night however, we faced a different type of obstacle.

Clouds starting to gather beyond the mountains

A second hurricane in the Pacific had sent yet more rain-laden clouds into the southwest, apparently decimating Phoenix and heading towards Texas. I checked with the rangers about flash flood concerns, but there seemed to be no threat in the park. We ate dinner and got ready for bed while the clouds settled in, and sure enough, at about 11 o’clock the rain started.

Lightening flashed almost constantly, lighting up the tent so we saw red through our eyelids while we tried to sleep. The thunder was intermittent, but with the largest strikes would come crashing through the mountains to further ensure sleep would be a serious difficulty. 

After about an hour of hard, steady rain, I decided an inspection of the tent was necessary. Dawning my headlamp I started scouring the tent floor, looking for water soaking in. Ryan joined in the assessment, when we discovered his side was showing more wetness than was comfortable. Looking through the screen, we realized the ground was actually water, and that his tennis shoes were floating in the tent vestibule.

Yup, a good inch of water had flooded our tent pad, and the rain was nowhere near letting up it seemed. 

In retrospect, if Ryan and I had just moved everything to the high side of the tent, we may have escaped the situation mostly dry, but as it was, with after all we’d heard about Phoenix, we decided to bail instead. And that’s how we spent the only night of the trip so far in the car – wet, exhausted, and unsure if our tent would be floating or sunk in the morning.

Sure enough, by the time morning came, the tent pad was pretty much dry and the tent itself on track to be dry as well, until another little shower during breakfast guaranteed that everything would be soaking in time to pack it up.

Rain, rain, go away...

Then it was off to Big Bend, with signs of flooding appearing all along the way, though there were nothing but the road to have been affected by it.

Big Bend National Park was genuinely incredible as Ryan and I drove into it. The mountains there are even more dramatic than Guadalupe, and the canyons of the Rio Grande add a neat element to the scenery. Sunset across the Chihuahau desert was really something to behold and the sunrise in the morning lit the canyon walls nearby where we camped.

Our second night in the park was spent in the Chisos Basin portion of the park, which is the most mountainous section. Here, aside from the four types of poisonous snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions, hikers also need to watch out for bears and mountain lions. Fun!

At least it's pretty...

We did two hikes in the area nearby our campground, both leading to incredible vistas of the mountains and the desert below, and on both, we didn’t get to see bears or mountain lions, no no! We got to see more tarantulas! You can just imagine my joy in that.

Having trouble seeing it? Imagine how we felt...

The first one Ryan almost stepped on, (even though it was a the size of our palm), and it reared and hissed at him like no arachnid should ever be capable of, and after that, Ryan and I kept our eyes fixated on the trail. We only stopped to enjoy the scenery after thoroughly surveying the area around us ahead of time.

Aside from just spiders, bugs are also enormous in Texas, which makes me believe the motto “everything is bigger in Texas” was spawned from their insect variety. Fortunately a lot of these bugs also happened to be pretty. Like these grasshoppers:

And these lizards (no, not insects, but still something that crawls on the ground...)

And there were lots of pretty flowers...

But then there were also enormous bees (I was stung on the leg), and centipedes and millipedes that were not quite so beautiful to behold. We even came across some kind of worm creature that was transparent, as in we could see its stomach and kidneys through the thing. Weird.

So basically Big Bend is an amazing landscape, buuuuuuuttttt between the bugs, the spiders, the scorpions, and the snakes, it may not be for everyone. I can’t help but say I was a little relieved to head towards the city after our wet, spider-filled experience in the Texas desert. Hey at least we survived!

It was still pretty...