Bonus Chapter 5:They’ll Never Think To Look For Us Here.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Texas. Miles from all civilization. And we needed a place to spend the night. A place to lie low and avoid whatever desperadoes might be out there. A hideout, if you will.
Thankfully, just a few miles down the road was the
Lajitas Golf Resort. Formerly known as The Hideout at Lajitas (which is a much, much cooler name), the town was originally bought by a millionaire at an auction in 2000. He sought to create an exclusive resort for the rich, but despite pouring over $100 million into the property, he couldn’t attract enough people willing to pay the membership fees and ultimately declared bankruptcy. Another developer bought the resort in 2007 and started slashing prices to try and attract more guests.
Did it work? I have no idea. I mean, the resort is still there. It consists of several sections of gorgeously-appointed hotel rooms, a nice sit-down restaurant, and a world-class golf course. But during the 2 nights we were there, I could have counted the number of other guests I saw on one hand. Several of the shops/guest areas were only intermittently open. I don’t know if it was off-season, or even if they have a high season. But it sure was great to have such a nice place all to ourselves.
We were given a second-floor room with a balcony in this row. We fell in love with the resort fairly quickly. If Disney ever built an Old West-style resort (which is not a terrible idea in the least, and I expect royalties if this happens), I imagine it would look an awful lot like this one.
I don’t seem to have photos of our room, so bad job by me. Admit it, you’re used to that by now. Anyway, suffice it to say they were very nice.
Our entire Tuesday was going to be spent enjoying the outdoor activities at Lajitas. My parents usually give our kids little day trips as gifts for their birthdays (thankfully acknowledging that we don’t need any more noisy toys in the house). So this year, they offered the kids each their choice of one of the activities the resort offered: a float trip on the Rio Grande, horseback riding, or a zip line.
Sarah, being our resident daredevil, considered the question for approximately 1.71 milliseconds before she leaped at the chance to do a zip line. She’s long wanted to try one, and was thrilled to finally have the chance to soar over desert canyons while hanging from a thin cable. David had never been horseback riding in his life, so he wanted to cross that off his bucket list. Scott waffled a bit before finally deciding to try the float trip. We had to figure out the logistics of the day since someone needed to watch Drew at all times. Julie wanted to do the float trip with Scott so she could take pictures of the canyon from the water’s surface. My dad offered to go horseback riding in the afternoon with Dave, while I had taken maybe half a millisecond longer than Sarah to call dibs on the zip line.
During our previous day in Big Bend, my parents had called the resort to schedule reservations for all of these activities. That was right about when the plans fell apart.
Turns out, the zip line wasn’t accepting reservations until Thursday, when we’d be long gone. We learned later that the zip line was only open a couple of days a week. Immediately, Sarah and I were extremely bummed to miss out on our chance to impersonate Batman.
So, with some scrambling, we set up the float trip for Sarah, Julie and Scott in the morning, and Dave, my parents and I would go out horseback riding in the afternoon.
In the morning, we wandered around the resort a bit.
I thought these wagon wheel chairs were kinda cool.
Julie, Sarah and Scott were picked up by the adventure guide in a van. The water was too low in the Rio Grande for rafts, so they’d have to go by canoe. We saw them off, and then Drew went off with my mother. Meanwhile, my father wasn’t going to take it easy on us. He had decided to build our character by taking David and me out on a hike. Not far from the resort was a trailhead that would lead us into the western edge of Big Bend National Park—the Mesa De Anguila Trail.
It was about 85 degrees or so at 8:30 in the morning. But hey, it was a dry heat.
The first part of the trail was easy. It was fairly flat, and we had to cross the golf course while resisting the urge to yell, “Fore!” or steal golf balls on the way. Eventually we reached the edge of the park border, and that’s when the trail changed. We were heading up to the top of this:
The trail went straight up through the gap in between the ridges. And when I say straight up, that’s pretty much what it felt like. Here’s the view looking back from the mesa. The resort is in the left-center of the photo, and you can see some of the golf course as well.
It didn’t help matters when my dad informed me that someone had been killed by a cougar on this trail several months earlier. I started looking for any sign of a cave with bones scattered around its mouth.
Thankfully, there was a payoff at the top of the ridge. The mesa afforded a beautiful view of a horseshoe bend in the Rio Grande. As it flows to the east (left in this photo), it forms Santa Elena Canyon, which we’d seen the day before.
And no, we couldn’t see anyone in canoes below.
My father asked me to take a photo of him with his grandson, so I took his phone, and then climbed up the mesa a bit to get a good angle. I was too high, so I crouched down, taking my best care to artfully compose the shot and do my best Ansel Adams impersonation.
That's when I sat on a cactus.
And they say white men can't jump.
Anyway, I got the needle out of my butt and took a crappy photo, and we moved on with our day.
After enjoying the view for a bit, we descended the trail, found our van, and headed straight for the general store to buy the biggest bottles of cold, overpriced Gatorade we could find. We met up with everyone else and traded stories about our morning adventures over a gourmet lunch of baked leavened dough garnished with nut and berry spreads. Those who went on the canoe trip seemed to have a great time, but I have no photos to share because Julie was afraid to take the camera on a canoe (not without reason) and even now, six months later, I have yet to see the kids’ GoPro shots. But I’m sure they’re great.
After lunch, Julie took charge of the kids and I went with my parents and Dave to go horseback riding. We drove to a pen a few miles west of the resort and found a little shack that was completely deserted. The previous riders hadn’t returned yet. That gave us a chance to assess the heat. It was well into the 90’s now, approaching 100 degrees, and we were required to wear long pants to go riding. We’d loaded up on water bottles for the ride, but there was no getting around the fact that it would be a scorcher.
The previous riding party returned, a fairly large group, and we waited while the guides took care of their guests and horses. Then the four of us got saddled up for a private ride through the Big Bend wilderness. It wasn’t private because we’d paid extra for the experience. It was private because no one else was stupid enough to ride during the hottest part of the day.
We had two guides, a woman named Jess and an Englishman named…uh…something. I’ll call him English Bob. He was indeed originally from Great Britain, but had fallen in love with the cowboy way of life somewhere along the way.
I felt bad for the horses, They’d just come back from carrying people up and down a steep mountain in the heat, and now they were being made to do it all over again. I made a mental note to give the horses a nice tip at the end.
There wasn’t much to the riding. It wasn’t my first time, but it’s just a matter of working to keep your balance. Lean back when they go downhill and forward when they go up. Dave, for his part, really enjoyed his first ride.
My horse was named Duncan, and I learned along the way that he was a bit of a jerk. (Insert joke about horses being match up with their riders here.) He wasn’t a big fan of following anybody, so he was constantly trying to ride up on top of the horse in front of me. When we reached the top of the mesa, the guide arranged us in a nice row for a family photo.
Duncan seemed to feel like my dad’s horse was crowding on his territory, though, so he started moving sideways to try and bump the offending horse out of the way.
Then, as we rested to enjoy the view and some water, he kept creeping over towards this cliff. I can only assume he was thinking of seeing how long it would take me to hit the bottom.
I kept pulling back on the reins and finally the guide got us back in line. Duncan reluctantly followed the group back down the mountain.
Another random observation: ever heard the phrase, "I have to pee like a racehorse."? Well, that phrase exists for a reason.
These horses must have bladders the size of an inflatable kiddie pool.
As always, you can't get this kind of crackerjack trip reporting anywhere else.
All told, it took about an hour and despite the heat, it was worth it just to give Dave the experience. I still would have rather done the zip line, though. I'm pretty sure there are fewer psychotic horses on the zip line.
Meanwhile, Julie and the kids had explored the resort and found the little-known Texas Longhorn museum inside the golf pro shop. They had mounted some of the longest horns from longhorn cattle all over the walls of the shop.
We were tired from the heat and didn’t feel like driving anywhere, so we decided to have dinner at the resort’s restaurant, the
Candelilla Café. We had figured that if we were going to be in Texas, we should probably load up on either Tex-Mex or BBQ, so this fit the former part of the equation perfectly. It had a nice outdoor seating area near a fountain that seemed like a good place to enjoy the evening.
The food was very good. Julie and I both ended up ordering the same thing—pork tacos. We also split an order of onion rings, because onion rings. Everything was delicious, except for the refried beans, because refried beans are uniformly nasty (no matter how good they are for your heart).
As we left the restaurant and lazily wandered around the resort, we managed to catch this glimpse of my parents walking ahead of us:
Later that night, we went out with the idea of doing some star gazing as the night skies were supposed to be incredibly dark. We were hoping to have a repeat of our
experience in Bryce Canyon a couple of years ago, when we saw multiple shooting stars and the Milky Way. But this time some clouds rolled in, and we didn’t get much of a view at all. So we packed it in and went to bed for the evening.
Overall, we thought the resort was great. Nicely kept, great amenities, and a beautiful location (if remote). I can certainly understand why my parents like to escape here every so often. I just wish I knew how the place manages to stay in business. But in any case, it’s a great getaway while it lasts!
I’m going to skip ahead a day in the trip now because the following day was a long, all-day drive from Big Bend to San Antonio. There’s really not much to tell for that one. We stopped at the National Park visitor center in the morning to finish up Drew’s Junior Ranger badge, and then drove. And drove. And drove. In case I hadn’t mentioned it before, Texas is big.
We stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch to break up the drive and then we drove. And drove. And drove.
Eventually, we made it to San Antonio. We stopped at a store called
Cavender’s Boot City because Julie had decided that she wanted genuine cowgirl boots as her souvenir from Texas. I told her that was way too expensive, and that she should just get a refrigerator magnet or something. But, after getting a reprimand from the
Budget Committee, we went to the store and she picked out a pair of boots that she will pretend to be surprised about when Christmas morning rolls around.
More importantly, Scotty picked out his souvenir, too. And Scotty and Drew happened.
Somehow, we all made it out of there without sequined shirts.
The only other item of note is that we stopped for our first authentic Texas BBQ dinner. Since I basically view life’s necessities as air, water, and BBQ, I could never resist the siren call of Texas beef brisket any more than I could resist a Dole Whip float on a hot summer day. I’d researched the Texas Monthly ranking of the
50 best BBQ joints in the state and tried to plan a few stops along the way as best as I could. Our first stop was a place in San Antonio called the
Smoke Shack*.
*--note: at the time of our trip, this place was on the 50 Best list, last published in 2013. Texas Monthly updated their list in summer 2017, and the Smoke Shack no longer appears.
I was probably as excited about eating barbecue as Julie was about getting cowboy boots. And the Smoke Shack didn’t disappoint. We spilt some 2-meat trays and tried the beef brisket and pulled pork, and both were excellent. The meat just melted in our mouths. The pitmaster came around asking everyone if they were happy, and even gave me a free sample of his peach cobbler for dessert. Thumbs up all around.
Coming Up Next: Your Mission, should you choose to accept it. Actually, 2 or 3 of them.