Fall Happenings

Life has been exciting here in the Dennis family!

We went to another Jukebox the Ghost concert. We were introduced to them by our friends Amanda and Brad. Aaron, Brad, Amanda, and I went to their HallowQueen concert last year (where they do half a concert of their own stuff and then a whole concert of Queen covers). This year they come to Austin opening for a band called Lawrence. I don't know why they don't do their own whole show here in Austin, but it was fun to see them nonetheless. And this time we took Annie as well. Look at us, being so cool getting into the Austin music scene.

The Brimleys also stayed for general conference, so it was a delightful weekend. Amanda and I talked about all the things and even started to figure out exactly what type of books we want to write by discovering what qualities are similar across all of the books we love.  

Over Aaron's birthday we took a big Texas road trip. We left on a Sunday after church and went to see my brother in west Texas. That was really nice! So fun to spend an evening with them. Then the next day we drove to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. So it wasn't a purely Texas road trip. We made a little jaunt into New Mexico. The cave was amazing! And we stayed for the bats as well.

Aaron hates having the fun on his driver's side arm. So he borrowed my sweater and my bandanna to protect himself. I just want to remember him in all his glory. 

The natural entrance at Carlsbad! Imagine the smell of half a million bats' guano. 

The cave formations had very cool sounding names like "Bottomless Pit" and "Fairyland" and "Giant Dome" etc. But we had fun renaming them: "The Carrot Stick," "Devil's Nosehairs," "Poop-blob Path," etc. The activity kept us quietly sniggering the whole way. While also enjoying nature's beauty of course. It was very cool! A good time was had by all.

This was my favorite picture. The blinding camera flash mixed with my shiny, cave-humid face, mixed with our lovely expressions, mixed with Scotty as a photo-bomber--this one's a keeper for sure.

We slept in a hotel in Carlsbad and then made our way to Big Bend National Park the next morning. But we stopped at the McDonald Observatory on the way. One of the big reasons we wanted to go to Big Bend was to look at the stars. But we picked the week of the full moon! So we went to the observatory during the day and attended a presentation about the sun and viewed it live through their special telescope and camera. It was very informative, and we saw some cool footage of solar prominences and learned about sunspots and the sun's magnetic fields and all that. And then we did the self-guided tour around the different telescopes. 

My family was so hungry after the sun presentation, and we hadn't even thought about what we would eat for lunch. The closest restaurant was a couple of hours away. I was the only one with enough strength/brain power to buy Chips Ahoy and beef jerky from the gift shop. Hunter/Gatherer for the win.

We drove the rest of the way to Big Bend (another two and a half hours) and arrived in the park just as the sun was setting. It was lovely, but it meant we were setting up our tent in the dark. Big Bend is huge! From the entrance, it was another forty minutes or so to our campground. And then you had to drive thirty to sixty minutes to other attractions in the park. There were also a lot of adventures only available to those with four-wheel drive. Our Honda Fit did not qualify. But we were able to do and see a lot on our two days there.

Big Bend, since it's so huge, has a lot of nature-y options. It has the desert, the mountains, and the river. On our first day we did the river, Santa Elena Canyon. It wasn't as overwhelmingly cool as The Narrows at Zion National Park, but still really pretty. And Mexico was right across the way! We only went as far as we could hike, so we'll have to explore more another time.

We saw lots of desert plants along the drive to the canyon, including pink cactuses! It made me want to watercolor. I can tell you, that is not an urge I have very often. But there were so many oddly shaped plants and different shades of green. And I thought at least attempting to represent them artistically would be within my skill level. So I collected some pictures as inspiration.

On the drive back from Santa Elena, we stopped at a hike called Upper Burro Mesa. Someone online had put it on their lost of top 10 things to do at Big Bend. We were the only people on the trail, and it was magical. We got to do some bouldering. There were monarch butterflies all along the way. We explored some cool rock formations. And at the end there was a natural slide and a cool lookout spot. It was so fun! We even got lost once. A true adventure!

And Aaron turned 43 years old! We celebrated by eating dinner at the one restaurant they have in the park. It had amazing views, and the food was pretty good. It was nice to have an excuse not to cook over our little camp stove. No fires allowed at Big Bend:(

But speaking of our little camp stove, we did have a fun time cooking food on it. And we had fun eating the food we cooked on it with our only utensils: spoons!

We slept in a tent at the campground. Before the trip, Aaron had suggested that we buy a new tent. He "hated" the one we had which we bought only a couple of years ago. I'd only slept in it once, and it was fine. I thought he was overreacting. I told him he could buy a new tent if he wanted, but I didn't have time. We took the old tent.

Well, I now hate the tent also because it turns out it isn't really a tent. It is a parachute in disguise. If you can't stake it down really well, then it tries to blow away to Mexico. And we were tempted more than once to let it go. 

The first night was okay except for the part where Aaron was convinced there was a bear outside our tent. It was just the tent flap flapping. Near morning, the front of the tent also started to cave in. No staking possible at this campsite. The ground was pure rock. 

The second night was bad. Aaron and I woke up at 1 am to do some damage control. We used some paracord to tie the front of the tent to the picnic table. It helped a little but the tent still wanted to collapse. 

The third night, at a different campsite on our way home, Annie suggested we just sleep on the ground. No, we were going to try the tent again. We had skills now. We knew what to do. We tied it down in every possible way it could be tied down. But we were on a bluff, and the wind was probably blowing 25 mph. It was billowing and falling at the same time. So once again, in the middle of the night, we wrestled the tent. After forty-five minutes of this, and laughing at everything because our lives had become utterly ridiculous, we put the tent away and...slept on the ground under the stars which we couldn't see because it was a full moon. Luckily, it wasn't too cold. It was the best sleep of the whole trip.

But back to Big Bend! We did the Window Trail and the Fossil Discovery Center. The hikes we did were really fun. Not a lot of elevation gain, but some fun bouldering and rock formations. And we had good shade and good temperatures. There were signs everywhere in the park, though, about drinking enough water and being off the trail by 10 am, etc. It's a very hot place, so we were glad to be there at a relatively cool time. 

Big Bend is apparently a really big place for finding fossils. So we learned a lot about that. Read way too many informational signs for Scotty's liking.

I would go back to Big Bend another time. I'm glad we checked it out. Being from Utah and Idaho, I expected to be unimpressed with the mountains. But they were legitimate mountains, not baby ones. So Texas has mountains. It's a huge state! 7ish hours of driving from Big Bend at the border to our house which is considered central Texas. The kids were great for all that driving. Annie listened to Brandon Sanderson and Scotty learned Morse code. We're in a fun phase where we can do lots of fun things with the kids. They're up for it. I hope we can make the most of it in the next few years!