About a week before the 4th of July, I realized that I was going to have an opportunity for a longer weekend. July 4th was a Thursday this year, so that meant for work, I had Thursday off and could work remotely Friday.
Basically, a 4-day weekend.
It wasn’t quite since I still had to work on Friday, but I knew I had a better opportunity to travel since it was more than just the usual two day weekend.
Saturday, June 29th
As the week rolled around I started thinking of ideas for what I could do. The biggest idea that was appealing to me was going to the beach somewhere along the Texas coast and finding three other dudes who would play Spikeball with me.
I didn’t know if I might find some random guys on a Facebook group from Austin and then we drive out together, or if maybe I would find some on the beach. I wanted to play Spikeball on the beach and I wanted to get out of the city. Those were my biggest priorities.
Monday, July 1st
Two days before I was going to leave, my roommate and I had a bible study at our house. At the Bible study, I mentioned that I was probably going to be out of town for the 4th and when asked where, I told them I wasn’t really sure. Maybe the beach, maybe hiking/backpacking. Playing it by ear.
One of the other guys at the study offhandedly said something to the effect of “oh, my friend and I are thinking of going out of town to camp this weekend too!” I was like, wait a minute, what? This could be perfect.
I asked him where and he said they weren’t super sure but were thinking about Big Bend National Park…
I couldn’t contain my excitement. I had really been wanting to go to Big Bend, but with my car and only four days, I didn’t think it made sense to go by myself. But it sounds like he and a friend are already going? Heck yes!
We talked more and started talking plans and decided we would tentatively plan to go together to…some place.
Wednesday, July 3rd
Fast forward two nights. We hadn’t fully decided where yet, but we were both ready. Maybe even ready to leave that night. His other friend had ditched him, so now it was just him and me.
We made the executive decision together: Big Bend. Tonight. Till Sunday.
Boom. I hardly knew him, but we were both so hungry for adventure, we couldn’t not. Better yet, he’s also an account manager and had to work remotely Friday, so we were in the same boat.
We packed our stuff, he came to the house at 3:00am and we headed out on our adventure.
Thursday, July 4th
We had great conversation in the car getting to know each other, and once we arrived at the park, we were both giddy for adventure. That’s something I very much appreciated about him. I would come up with a crazy idea (as I often do) and he would be completely down and encourage it.
One of our ideas?
Let’s go to Mexico!
Big Bend straddles the border of Mexico and the US, separated by the Rio Grande river. There’s a path in the park you can take and you can cross the river either by a small rowboat or by swimming/wading across.
We thought, why not? We’re so close, we might as well!
So after attempting to cross the day we got here, we found out the crossing was closed and during the Summer is only open Friday-Monday. We picked another trail at the park to hike, and thanks to me being an idiot, got completely off the trail and ended up hiking a completely different…trail, steep, crumbly rock mountain…An early test of Anthony and my friendship.
I totally thought it was just a really hard cool trail, but somehow I had gotten off the path and was taking us to nowhere.
Once we got to the top of the incorrect mountain, Anthony made it very clear to me that we were NOT going down the same way we had come up. I shyfully apologized and agreed to figure out a new way down.
We did. Not sure it was any easier, but it sure was a different way down.
We finished the day off with a disgusting dinner burnt by yours truly.
A rough start but still, it felt so good to get out of the city.
It also might be the first time in my life that I have never even heard a firework on Independence Day. I didn’t mind one bit. In fact, this might become a new tradition for me. One of the most peaceful holidays ever.
Friday morning, July 5th
We both had to work still on Friday, so we knew we needed to find some place with WiFi.
We got up around 5:00 so we could go watch the sunrise in a scenic spot while eating breakfast.
Then we headed to reserve a campsite at the basin. It was full the night before, but we thought if we went early enough in the morning we could get something for the next two days.
Once we got a site reserved, we began our quest for one of the 21st-century man’s necessities: internet.
There was a restaurant/lodge near our campsite, so we started there. To our surprise, they had WiFi and plugins! Even outside it seemed to work!… Unfortunately, the WiFi was like using dialup without ever dialing. In other words, it didn’t work. At all.
We went and talked to a lady inside to ask about it but she simply said they just don’t have the best WiFi and there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. She pointed us to the visitor center, about 30 minutes back out towards the exit of the park.
We needed it so we could work, so we hopped back in the car and started our trek back.
After arrival at the visitor center, the WiFi worked like an Angel. Quick and efficient! Only thing we had to do now was find someplace with a plug so we could work longer than three hours.
I went inside, searched a little, found a plug by some couches, and plopped down to work. About 2 minutes into my work, a grumpy ranger who had greeted Anthony and me yesterday came up and said: “you need to remove that immediately.” Talking about the plugin I could only assume.
Now, somehow feeling like the scum of the earth who intentionally ruined his life, I tried to ask/explain/reason/level/etc. with him to tell him our situation and see if there was any way we could use the outlet – even if we needed to pay to use it since it was using electricity.
He had about as much sympathy as an alligator eating a deer, and told me that “they don’t do that”, and he “didn’t care what my issue was, it’s not allowed.”
I respected his authority, unplugged my laptop, put it in as low power mode as possible, and we worked till our laptops died.
In hindsight, we should have planned this part better as we both felt bad about only putting in about 4-5 hours of work in, but we decided there was nothing we could do about it now.
Friday Evening, July 5th
Since we had to cut our work a little short, we realized we had time for potentially a longer hike. We picked one we thought was an 8 miler but ended up being a 10.5-mile trail up to Emory Peak.
We got started around 3:00, the hottest part of the day. And after passing about three people who all mentioned that Emory Peak wasn’t so great and that the view about a mile and a half from the top is just as good if not better, we decided to just go there.
One of my favorite things in the world to do is to make and eat breakfast/lunch/dinner on the top of a peak after hiking it. So I carried our dinner up and we made dinner on top of the peak. Probably my favorite part of the trip. These dinner-top experiences often are.
It started to rain and we hiked back down at twice the speed we came up – we slept well that night.
Saturday, July 6th
We hadn’t given up our plan to go to Mexico yet. Since we couldn’t go on Thursday, we decided to revisit the idea on Saturday. The crossing opened at 9:00, so we knew we would have a bit of a chill morning until then.
We had a laid back breakfast followed by about an hour of prayer, and then we headed to the crossing.
As an aside, it’s so nice going on trips like this with other believers because you have so many things that you share in the way you see things. Being able to spend time in prayer on Saturday for the lost and our friends and family all over the country was a really cool thing to be able to do.
After getting to the crossing, we decided to take a small rowboat across and then hike to a very small village about half a mile away from the Rio Grande River.
We explored the city.
Ate some Mexican food.
And had a very nice conversation with the son of the owner of the restaurant.
What a life.
Talking to several of these people living there, it seems that all they’ve ever known is this tiny village out in the middle of nowhere. Not more than a hundred people.
It’s amazing to me that a place like that is within a mile of a US. border. Such a different culture.
After our trek to Mexico, we headed back and opted to swim/wade our way back to the US. If nothing else, just to say we swam to the US from Mexico.
We headed to a short trail to a hot springs, swam in the Rio Grande River, then over to the Hot Springs, then back to our campsite.
That catches you up to where I’m at now. Laying in a hammock, sheltered from a constant drizzle that’s been coming down for a couple hours.
We head out tomorrow at 5:00am. Back to the hubbub of life. Back to work. Back to the routine.
I needed this. I really did. The city and office life slowly drain me, and this fills me up again. I could live with only one or the other but instead love the ability to do both in my life.
I’ve experienced a beautiful creation this weekend and I’m so thankful for every second of it.