Renewal in the Desert

Who doesn't love a good road trip? The kind with wide open spaces, towering scenery, and a collection of good stories at the end? I was lucky enough to do that with a best friend from childhood last month.

A lot of Foreign Service Officers take road trips while on their Congressionally-mandated home leave in between assignments, not just to reacquaint ourselves with the homeland, but also....you are sort of homeless for 4-6 weeks. It's easy for me because Mom and Dad lovingly keep a room prepared, but for families with kids this is actually very difficult. Anyway, after a visit with extended family and friends in San Antonio, my friend Kristen and I hit the road for a week of camping and national parks in West Texas and New Mexico. 

 Kristen and I like to plan trips. As in, we made a Google Doc about this months in advance. And researched maps and driving times and campsites. We maximized our short time to include Big Bend, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Guadalupe, and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks. Some highlights:

 Hiking along the Rio Grande in Big Bend as a thunderstorm approached.

So many kinds of cacti, and all more colorful than I'd expected.

Our campsite at Guadalupe Mountain was just charming. 

 BLUE SKIES. The color that skies are supposed to be.

We did some excellent hiking - 13 miles around the South Basin in Big Bend, to the top of Guadalupe (only 8,749 ft, but the highest in TX and in 100 degree weather...), other short hikes to historic homesteads and petroglyphs. And each night we'd make dinner on a camp stove, watch the moon and stars come out, and be grateful for all the beauty around us. No cell phone service, no problems. 

We even crossed paths with an old friend from Xishuangbanna days, Rebecca, who has literally written the book on West Texas:

I've talked with friends for many years about how we need longer in-between times to process everything when you leave one part of the world and journey to a new place and season. Like travel by ocean liner instead of airplane - seriously! Right before this trip I'd gotten some hard news and then was sick for many days, and this in-between time of pure air and healthy adventures became a time of renewal. A time of closing more than one old chapter and getting ready for new ones. A time of growing stronger.