Mammoth Goes To(ward) the Big Bend

Friday, March 13, 2021

Home to San Angelo State Park, on the way to Big Bend Ranch (hear-after known as BBR) State Park. 

This trip was a dream of mine from last year and a good part of the reason we bought the jeep. BBR was recommended as a great place to go--but only for high-clearance vehicles. So in choosing our next, and possibly last, vehicle, we wanted high clearance. For the sand on the Texas beaches we wanted four-wheel-drive. And for best interaction with the Mammoth Motor Home, we wanted towability.

All that given, we wanted a Jeep. Jeeps aren't especially well known for reliability, but according to consumer reports, most of the things that go wrong are the add-ons--things like power windows and top--and we weren't interested in any of those. We might have liked the 'safety package' that included the lane-change blind spot warning, but having that would have required the full-up electronics whazoodle--power windows, power door locks, on-dash computer. And all of that was unnecessary and all prone to breakage.

So we got the most bare-bones Jeep we could find with the only add-on being the towing package. And we love it--although I have to admit that we're really growing to hate the manual door locks.

So, back to business. The 'destination' of this trip was BBR and scenic highway 170 from Lajitas to Presidio, along the southern border of Texas. We most likely wouldn't go off-road at all, but at least we had a vehicle that would make the drive and not need to be pulled out of a ditch somewhere.

But things were conflicted from the start. We had a trip to Fort Hood to immediately following, so I wanted to cut this one short by a day in order to give us more time to prepare for the next. Which would be a doozy of a trip, because we were going to feed our kid and his kids. So I wanted to end this trip on Thursday instead of Friday to give us an extra day.

And also, I found out when I went to make the "save the day" reservation for BBR, it was booked. Little did I know this was Spring Break week, and all the day use slots for Monday through Wednesday were booked. So I snagged one for Thursday, the day I wanted to leave, and hoped for the best.

Anyway, we had a very routine preparation and departure, arriving at San Angelo State Park to find it almost exactly as we had left it last year. Spring migrants were not yet arriving, so it was pretty devoid of birdage except the usual--house finches, mockingbirds, gulls and a few ducks in the water. Still a nice place, but a little bland.
Coots on the lake: