BackRoads: The Big Bend

People (Northerners) think Texas is just a dull, treeless, rolling plain that goes on forever – actually that would be the Panhandle. They don’t realize we have the mountains of West Texas, (the highest peak is almost 9,000 feet), the ruggedness of Big Bend National Park, deserts – even painted deserts and canyons, like Palo Duro, that are almost beyond belief.

Big Bend Country is an awesome area in which to ride your bike. Here you see a part of Texas that most people don’t even realize exists. Places like “The Basin” where nature has carved a window just because the view is so awesome. This is Big Bend Country deep in Southwest Texas. The area is a hot, dry, inhospitable but beautiful place. Every turn, every hill brings a new panorama of color, blue skies and strange geological formations.

Along with all of this Big Bend National Park is inhabited by snakes, scorpions, and buzzards. The land is punctuated with the thorns of cactus, underscored by heat. Drought, flash floods and spectacular lightening form the exclamation points. Whatever your favorite terrain is you are probably going to find a little of it here. So much to see and to photograph that it is necessary to stop frequently just to gawk. In the shade of one of the Teepees it is hard to realize that you are only about 600 miles – and two days riding – from Houston. This really is a world away.

People who visit Big Bend fall in love with the place and want to return again and again. In the midst of the harshness there is beauty – Bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrushes, flowering cacti and other plants too numerous to mention. Big Bend is the classic combination of The Beauty and The Beast. The strong and the weak, the hunter and the hunted all living together, a society where today’s songbird becomes tomorrow’s lunch for the buzzard. But that is the way God planned it. In the end everything in perfect balance and life goes on.

Day 1. Houston to Del Rio. The first day should be an easy 319-mile run from Houston (via back roads) to San Antonio, Castroville, Uvalde, Hondo, and into Del Rio for the night. “Should be an easy trip – not was an easy trip”

Catching Hail in West Texas. The hailstones that pounded us without mercy were getting larger by the minute. The wind was howling, the cold rain was dumping on us in torrents, the dirt road beside the highway had become a small raging stream and our only “news” from the outside world was a weather bulletin that said we were almost directly in the path of a tornado.

Our entire group – at least those we could account for – were cold, soaked to the skin, and more than just a little bit scared. Several were bleeding from places where the hailstones had hit directly on unprotected skin. (We later found out that hailstones reach speeds of 110 to 125 mph!)

This was not the way the 31 st annual Big Bend trip was supposed to start!

We were about 20 miles west of Bracketville and since leaving the last rest stop about 10 miles back we had watched an ominous black cloud moving rapidly, sending out constant bolts of lightening and on a path that would inevitably intercept with ours.

“Oh well, we are going to get wet but no big deal. After all we are only about 15 miles from our hotel for the night.”

When the rain started in earnest the riders did their best to pick their way down the two-lane highway in spite of poor visibility and windshields and eyeglasses that were...

We hope that you enjoyed reading this excerpt from "The Big Bend". If you would like to read the entire article and more, you can order a back issue of Sep / Oct 2004 where this article was originally published.

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