March 18, 2024 - April 5, 2024 -- Big Bend National Park, Thousand Trials Medina Lake, Buda Place, and Thousand Trails Lake Tawakoni
Written By: Wendy
This next blog post will have one major theme running through it: sickness. For this entire chunk of time at least one of us was sick with something. We traded and swapped germs and then picked up new ones to share. None of us were spared, and everyone was able to experience the unique challenge of sharing one tiny bathroom when various people have urgent needs at the same time. I was a special ed teacher, so I've seen it all and not much grosses me out. (Other than saliva. I cannot take saliva. Do NOT spit on me and do not ask me to share a straw, utensil, or toothbrush with you. Keep your saliva to yourself. Give me all the throw up, poop, pee, and boogers you want though.) So I will do my very best to gloss over the nasty parts and keep sickness details vague.
We were all so excited to explore Big Bend National Park. We made the reservations as soon as the booking window opened up, exactly 6 months ago. We scored a coveted full hookup spot in the Rio Grande Village Campground inside the national park. Big Bend is a massive park, and I had so much that I wanted to explore and see. (Let me just give you some foreshadowing that I will have to come back to Big Bend to see and do all the things that I wanted do. Other than see javelinas; I did see those!) We decided to take our first full day in the park easy. For those of you that did not read the previous blog post, Caroline came down with a terrible stomach bug the night before we drove to Big Bend. She was still not eating much and was much more lethargic than usual the next day. We checked in at the visitor center and made detailed plans for the rest of the week for when she was feeling more up for activities. There was a short 1.5 mile hike that left from our campground, so we took the opportunity to explore that trail while Caroline snoozed on the my back in the backpack. It hiked along the Rio Grande River with views into the hills of Mexico on the other side. In some of the large rocks on the ground, there were dug out bowls that were used by ancient people for grinding spices and foods. Scott and I were amazed by the sizes of these holes in the rocks and tried to fathom the amount of time and dedication it must have taken to grind these bowls out of stone. One part of the hike went over a swampy section with high reeds growing all along the wooden planked walkway. Parker, being the curious kid that he is, laid down flat on his belly and discovered that he could see hundreds of tiny fish in the water below the walkway between the planks. He convinced Scott and I to both look, and we were quite surprised by the number of very active fish down there. On the way back when we passed over the wooden walkway again, he wanted to look at the fish again. There was an older couple hiking the opposite way that we stopped to chat with briefly. Parker insisted on the man looking at the fish. He was so insistent that finally the older gentleman of about 65 or 70 knelt down and then sprawled out on his stomach to look at the fish. He, too, was surprised by the number of fish, and I was surprised by Parker's persuasive skills. I was worried the gentleman would be stuck down there, but he was much more nimble that he looked and popped right back up. As we said good bye and went our separate ways, I marveled at the amazing power of children. There is something about their innocence that adults can just not resist and just have to give into. If I would have told the gentleman to lay down on his stomach to look at fish, I can guarantee that he most certainly would not have. But an enthusiastic and endearing 4 year old makes the same request, and it is granted with little resistance and hesitation. When does that change? Why does that change? I quietly wondered these thoughts to myself as we trudged back to our cozy little home on wheels.
Scott and I chatted excitedly at dinner that evening and solidified our plans for the next few days. We would hike to the hot springs and the abandoned ghost town, cross the border and go into Mexico on rowboats to visit the Mexican town of Boquillas, hike Boquillas canyon, and see the dinosaur fossil exhibit. If we had time we'd maybe even venture up to see the Chisos Mountains part of the park. It was perfectly planned out. Unfortunately a few hours later just after falling asleep, I felt the rumbles in my tummy and they did not stop until the next morning. In the middle of the night, Parker also woke up sick. We slept together and took turns running to the bathroom and rubbing each other's backs. Scott ended up getting sick a few days later just as I was starting to feel better, making it good timing to swap kid duties. Needless to say, none of us did much more than leave the campground for the next several days. Our one big adventure was on our last full day when everyone was for the most part healthy. We went to go see the dinosaur fossils that were found in the park. Parker was thrilled to see all the real fossils and replicas of huge dinosaurs. We learned about the history of the area and that it used to be an ocean, then a swampland, then inhabited by dinosaurs, and now a desert. Our excursion was short and required little effort, which was perfect since we were all beat by the end of it anyway.
On our last morning in the park, I was feeling extremely disappointed that I did not get to do most of the experiences that I was so excited to do. After stomping around and fuming at the kids for no good reason, I threw Caroline into the backpack, strapped her to my back, and we set out for a sunrise walk so I could reset with some fresh air. We were rewarded on our walk when we saw a pack of javelinas. I had been desperately wanting to see javelinas since I first learned about the animal in Arizona two months ago. I stared in awe for a few minutes, took a deep breath of cool fresh air, and then headed back to pack up. I was able to leave the park with some sense of peace in my heart, after being able to check at least one thing off my list and knowing that I will be back to finish my explorations.
Our next stop was Thousand Trials Medina Lake, which is about one hour northwest of San Antonio. We had recently noticed a spread of mold on our ceiling, so we had an appointment to take our trailer in to have the mold inspected to make sure that it was not black mold. They needed to keep our trailer overnight so we took advantage of being homeless for a night by getting a hotel in downtown San Antonio and explored the city for two days. We leisurely walked along the umbrella lined riverwalk path, learned about the history of the Alamo, ate delicious authentic Texas BBQ, and explored the San Antonio zoo. When we returned to our trailer, the kids were so excited to be back in their own beds again and see their long lost toys (that they hadn’t seen for a full 36 hours). It was a nice break from trailer life and reaffirming when we returned that we were all excited to be back and that it truly felt like home. While we were in San Antonio, Caroline came down with a nasty cold and cough, so we knew we needed some relaxation days. We didn’t have any other bigs plans for the next 3 days while we were at Medina Lake, so we took it easy to rest up and do life things at the campground. The campsite that we were in had a large forest behind it, so the kids spent hours each day exploring the trees and playing games together. Parker was also thrilled to discover that there was a pirate themed scavenger hunt all over the large campground. It was an elaborate scavenger hunt, and it took us three days to complete it, but we were rewarded with gold doubloons after we solved all the riddles.
While at the campground, I found out that my younger brother, Eric, and his girlfriend would be in Austin for Easter weekend, which was only days away and just under 2 hours from us. We didn’t originally have plans to go to Austin since there wasn’t a Thousand Trails campground near there, but we decided to leave Medina Lake 2 days early to meet up with my brother and his girlfriend’s entire extended family. We were treated to a true southern holiday meal with southern favorites like bbq, roasted veggies, sweet corn, and a whole buffet of desserts. Parker and Caroline ran around with the Arden’s college-aged cousins like they were their peers, and Parker had all of them playing an elaborate game of pirates. The highlight of the day, though, was when Parker found the golden egg during the Easter egg hunt. He open it up and there was a whole dollar in there. He gleefully shouted, “I got MONEY!!! Pirates LOVE money!!” We had a good laugh, and then said our good byes as Caroline was drooping and her cold seemed to take a turn.
The next morning, we left to head north to Thousand Trails Lake Tawakoni, just northeast of Dallas. Caroline spiked a fever in the evening before and had a fever all day in the car. She was complaining about her ear, so we knew that unfortunately her cold had turned into an ear infection. Just keep the sicknesses coming. Luckily, we didn’t have any big plans for while we were in Lake Tawakoni other than get ready for the solar eclipse event the following week and maybe hopefully we get some work and repairs done that had been on the to-do list for months. The second night we were there, I woke up in the middle of the night with another stomach bug. This one was not as violent as the previous one that I had JUST had a few weeks ago, but it lasted four days. And all the while, Caroline’s fever and ear pain persisted, and Parker came down with the same cold that Caroline had. Scott was the sole survivor to stay germ free and nurse us all back to health. We were there for a week, and Scott left the campground once to go grocery shopping, but other than that, we didn’t leave the campground and hardly even left our campsite. We knew we needed to slow down, we knew we needed to take more breaks, we knew it, but we had clearly not taken it to heart because all our bodies were screaming at us to slow down. So we did. We lounged around and made sure that we were all as healthy as we could be before our big Escapee Solar Eclipse Event. We were meeting up with our friends that we had met at Bash, so we desperately wanted to be healthy so that we could enjoy our time with them. The day before we supposed to leave, I finally woke up with normal stomach and could hold food down for the first time in days. Caroline’s fever broke and her energy seemed to be coming back, too. Parker’s cold seemed to be going away, and Scott was still healthy. Maybe for once we would all be healthy! We at least had a glimmer of health, but would it be short lived? You’ll have to read our next post to find out!