Life after 50 with a dash of Healthy Adventure

Hiking after 70

This is one of my favorite pictures. However it is a few years old and the transparency was dirty. I used to know how to clean them, but have forgotten over the years. Maybe I’ll get a comment on this post with information on cleaning. I got a VuPoint for Christmas so I could load all my old transparencies and negatives onto my computer. This is the only one I have loaded until I clean the rest. I know I could Google for the info, but just haven’t do so – don’t ask me why – I couldn’t say.

Anyway, I digress. This post is about my favorite aunts. They have spent years going to Big Bend National Park in the winter to primitive camp and hike. One lives in Houston, TX and is now 80 – she’s the tall one. The other is in her 70′s and lives in St. Charles, MO – she’s the youngest. They are my mother’s sisters. You guessed it – my mother is the middle child and doesn’t like to camp.

My aunts, Merrilyn Beauchemin and Jewel Linke have even gone to Big Bend and camped alone. I tried to discourage this for their safety. When in fact, the have spent so much time in the area that they have made lasting friends in Study Butte, Terlingua and Lajitas.

This photograph was taken the year I decided to meet them in Big Bend so I could show them a part of the park they had never seen. You needed four wheel drive and they were in a small car. I had the four wheel drive and made frequent trips to Big Bend myself, but that’s another post. They are wandering around ruins off the four wheel drive Old River Rd. It follows the Rio Grande and is 40 miles long. However, on this day we didn’t make the 40 miles and turned back toward pavement at the Mariscal Mine, I think. It’s been a few years and we could have actually made the whole road. I stayed about a week with them and we traveled a lot of heavy duty four wheel drive roads. We camped every night, except for the night before their BIG hike to the Pinnacles. It’s about an 11 mile hike in the Chisos Mountains and has a lot of steep terrain. I think it’s classefied as a moderate hike. I was smart enough to know I couldn’t come close to keeping up with those two. So the plan was I would head out on the trail about the time they would have made it to their destination. Then I would meet them on the trail and we would hike back together. Now that was a good plan.

The beauty of Big Bend National Park is that the area is so large and amazing that you can spend several days without running into another person. That is if that is what you want! Otherwise when the sun sets head for Terlingua and the Starlight Dinner Theater. Home for locals and visitors and very unique. Well worth the trip. Big Bend – not a place you happen to pass by on the way to somewhere else.

There are so many places to go while staying at Big Bend. There is Marfa and the Marfa Lights. Then there’s Alpine a tiny college town for Sul Ross University and a lot like a mini out in the middle of nowhere Austin, TX. Love it. Of course you wouldn’t want to miss the Star Gazing parties at McDonald Obsevatory in Ft. Davis – or even the Davis Montains. The list goes on and on. Check it out if you ever have the time.

Oops, almost forgot Marathon and the Gage Hotel. Very historical small town on the way to Big Bend if you are entering from the north.

Big Bend National Park in the summer

This was Whitney’s first vacation with her grandparents and has not been the last, but it is the one we’ll talk about on this post. Our trip began at Carlsbad Canyon. Then we moved on to the Prude Ranch at Ft. Davis, TX where we stayed until moving onto the lodge in the Chisos Mountains of BBNP.