Rattlesnakes, Deer, and Horses....Oh My!

So if you read my Not Me Monday post, you know that I went camping in Big Bend Ranch state park over the Thanksgiving weekend. I went with my girls, my parents, my brother and his family, and my sister and her boyfriend---my husband {wisely} opted out of the trip. There are a few highlights {or low points, however you choose to look at it} that I want to share with you. For easy reading, I organized them into a timeline, but I warn you—this post is a little long, rambly, and all over the place.

Wednesday: I leave work at noon to pick up my brother so we can drive 692 miles to join the rest of our family who had already left at 3AM that morning. At 11:30pm we arrive in Presidio, which is the town that the park is located; we think we’ve made excellent time. We turn onto FM 170 as we read the map and start looking for signs for the park. Instead we come to a dead end in the road, we choose a direction at random and come to another dead end, we go back, choose the other way and get the same result. We go back, thinking we must have missed a turn…there are several roads to choose from, with no street signs. There is just desert sand, a few shrubs, and random houses. We drive back the way we came into the heart of Presidio, which is basically a ghost town at this hour, and then start over. We finally find the turn we missed that continues FM 170. We are happy now that we are almost there. We so foolishly thought. About 30 minutes after first arriving in Presidio, we finally see signs for the state park. We turn onto a gravel road and after a few minutes we see a map with all the listed campsites. I look for ours and it looks as though it’s another 10 miles or so. HOWEVER, we can only drive about 20 miles an hour on this road. So we continue on down the gravelly, bumpy road. Keep in mind that it is pitch black outside, a little after midnight, and we have already been driving for 11 hours at this point. OH, and I left out the best part. The last phone connection we’d had with my family was several hours before, so we could only assume that wherever our campsite was—there was no cell phone service. So we were left with no directions from Presidio to the park. After about 30 minutes on this gravel road, we start seeing some of the campsite names; we keep driving, and driving, and driving. Mind you, this is the country so there are no lights anywhere except our headlights and the stars above. An hour passed and things were getting pretty twilight zoneish. Then another half hour passed and we are still driving on the same road, occasionally our headlights would hit the side of a hill or mountain and I could tell that we were slowly elevating. After almost two hours we see a building and a small light, I realize it’s the ranch headquarters and I know we are close to our campsite!!! I run into the restroom and quickly get back in the car. My brother rechecks the posted map and says we are not far from our campsite…..and he was right, a few more minutes and we saw the sign, turned, and saw our parents van and tents. It was 2:30AM at this point, we ran up to the tents, and all my parents could do was thank God that we made it. They thought we would never find it, because they hadn’t had phone service for the last hour of the trip and had no way to call and give us specific instructions. Thank goodness they have smart children (haha). I was so happy to be there! I had really started to question my own sanity during the last hour of the drive.

Thursday: As we are talking to one of the park rangers, she happens to mention that rattlesnakes are actually not in hibernation yet (as we thought). The days are still so sunny and warm that they come out to sunbathe and then make their way into hiding when evening falls. So of course I start worrying about stumbling over one as I sleepily climb out of my tent during the night to pee on the ground. Later as I’m driving up to the store at ranch headquarters, what do I see?....a rattlesnake in the road. It was coiled up, so I pull up as close as I can get and take pictures. Then later as I drove back I saw another one (positive it was a different one because it was in a different spot completely). We also spotted several deer on the drive up, while we were hiking, and of course the drive back….oh and there were several wild boars that run loose at the park.

Friday: Since Presidio is right on the border of Mexico, we decided to drive out of the park and cross over for a few hours and check out the shopping. I’ve been to a few border towns, and some touristy spots in Mexico before; I love to practice what little Spanish I do know, but thankfully my brother’s wife is fluent. As soon as we cross over we realize that this one is not so much a touristy town. There weren’t any good shops, or a market square, etc. However, my brother and his fam were hungry so against my better judgment we hunted down a place to eat. We walk in and there are only two chairs, no tables, the man says that he is just getting set up but we can order food and take it out. Oh okay, thanks. So it’s a fried chicken place and the menu looks normal, they have pics of chicken dinners according to how many pieces you want. I get a 2 piece, they get a 3 piece and a 4 piece (I promise there is a point here); when we get the food and walk out, we have to sit on the curb to eat. We all open our containers to realize that no matter what meal we each ordered, we all ended up with the same part of the chicken…..and what part that was…I will never know. They were sort of wingish looking……but who knows. The girls and I opted for nibbling the fries and drinking the pepsi instead. When it was almost time to go, Alexandria insisted that she find a particular necklace, so I hunt down the street vendor who has them and proceed to engage in my very first transaction completely in Español (woo hoo, yay me!)….I was so proud. I even talked him down from 10.00 to 7 (although I was going for 5). And apparently my accent was pretty convincing because at the end he started telling me something in rapid fire Spanish, in which I had to sheepishly reply “No comprende”. He just laughed.

Saturday: Horseback riding tour. Alexandria and I shared a horse (Livy of course stayed behind with my parents); my brother and his fam also joined us on the tour. So we were supposed to ride for 1 hour, but then they offered to continue for an extra hour for free. So this was fine and everything was going okay, until we got to the mountainous areas. Then I realized that they expected us to ride our horse up and down the side of rocky hills. And let me just say right here—I’ve never ridden a horse before. So as we were making our way down one of the rocky hills, Alexandria starts crying and I start praying. I prayed profusely for us not to fall. Then at some point I had to start mentally reciting the Lord’s prayer; which is something I do when I get into these predicaments because it keeps my mind occupied enough to not go through the list of all the tragic outcomes that could happen in my current situation. Finally we made it to the bottom. We relaxed, thanked God, and then started to really enjoy the scenery. Towards the end, all the horses started running towards the corral……I had to work really hard to keep mine from even trotting because it felt like we would both go flying off the back. Not to mention the trail guides didn’t speak a word of English, so they weren’t a whole lot of help in teaching us how to ride.

So that’s it…….we made it home in about 10 hours (not counting the stops), and I slept wonderfully in my own bed with dreams of mountains and wildlife, and with a whole new understanding of the term saddle sore.