Seven Days at Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas

I’ve been to the Big Bend area several times since moving to West Texas in 2007, but this was my first time to visit while living full-time in Guinevere the van, and with my current two dogs. Since adopting Japhy (my sensitive boy who is dog reactive and selectively social), I typically avoid busy public campgrounds in favor of more remote public land; however, my friend Debbie was planning a week-long trip specifically to hike in this area, and I decided it would make a fine place to have a DIY writing retreat to work on my CT book. Dogs are not allowed on hiking trails in Big Bend National Park, so sticking around camp and writing my book while Debbie hiked seemed like the perfect plan.

The dogs and I met up with Debbie in Midland, Texas, and drove from there to Monahans Sandhills State Park for one night to break up the drive before heading south to Big Bend for the rest of the week. Monahans Sandhills State Park is about 2.5 hours north of Big Bend and maintains 4,717 acres of wind-sculpted sand dunes. It’s a small but lovely little haven of sand to play in, birds to watch and photograph, and land and sky to explore.

I was, of course, concerned about my dogs reacting to other dogs in a busy campground (primarily Japhy, though Hazel tends to mirror whatever Japhy is feeling/doing in the moment). Vacation-style campground stays are different from backpacking, as the dogs aren’t nearly as physically occupied or mentally stimulated. The lack of such activity (and my immersion in writing) would likely lead to some boredom and unwanted reactions to noises, other dogs, people, etc. I was relieved to discover that our back-in site at Cottonwood Campground was wide enough that I could maneuver the van horizontally across in such a way that the van itself would block most of the dogs’ view of the rest of the campground, and especially the road that encircles it. I intentionally reserved a site at the end of an outside row, leaving us with a clear view of neighbors on only one side. I reveled in the mostly successful outcome of my strategic efforts the entire week that we were there. :)

In the seven days we were there, I wrote at my laptop while outside (with the dogs outside with me, leashed to the van) as well as sitting inside the van (with dogs inside with me), and there were only two serious reactions—once to a dog someone was walking on the road in front of our campsite (Hazel saw the dog and ‘boofed,’ tipping off Japhy and causing him to react), and once to some peccaries that crawled under the barbed-wire fence directly behind our site and scavenged for food and water around the neighboring campsite one afternoon. Overall, I’m very happy with this.

Our campsite offered a great view of Cerro Castellan and was walking distance from access to the Rio Grande River.

On the penultimate day of our trip, I detached and packed away the grill and awning so that I could drive around and make some new photographs for my online shop (the above images and more will be added soon). I ended up making a few photos of “Guinevere in the Wild” as well. I can’t adequately articulate how much this van has changed our lives for the better. Sometimes I’m just so immensely grateful that my instinctual response is to make photos. A lot of photos. :)

Anyway, it looks like the video just finished uploading to YouTube, so I’ll link it at the bottom. I hope you enjoy it (and the photos).

Be well.