Motorcycling in Big Bend

On Sunday we pulled the motorcycles out of the trailer for our first ride through the park and on into the Terlingua Ghost Town, where they mined mercury until the mines ran out. The town was abandoned until the 1970s when, given its current appearance, it must have been re-populated by hippie-types. It has a cafe with good espresso and WiFi and bad access over a lumpy dirt road.

Terlingua is internationally known for its chili cook-off (sadly not while we were there). The closest we got was Kathy's Kowgirl Kozmic Kafe, where the dutch oven cooking competition had been held the day before. We had some barbecue for lunch, pulled pork for Ellen and chopped brisket for me. You had to add your own sauce, which we didn't find until halfway through the sandwiches.

Back to the riding ... though some say the mantra is "Ride to Eat".

The road through the park is very good; most of the roads have been recently resurfaced. The scenery is spectacular so I guess it's a good thing that the speed limit inside the park is 45. Wonderful roads, great views, warm and sunny weather, light traffic--what's not to love about motorcycling in Big Bend?

Our ride was about 100 miles, round-trip. Even though Bid Bend is miles from anywhere, it seems to be a magnet for motorcycles, especially dual-sports. Yesterday we saw about a dozen bikes on the paved roads and just as many coming out of the dirt roads. I doubt that we will be trying much of the Big Bend dirt. The bikes we've seen tend to be 250-650cc in off-road trim ridden by guys in full armor.

While at the camp store yesterday afternoon, I ran into a half-dozen guys who had ridden down from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to ride the dirt. They had just finished a ride of the Old Ore Road, a popular unimproved 26.4 mile "shortcut" from the northern part of the park to just above the Rio Grande Village. The road guide suggests taking this road at about 15 mph and the improved dirt road speed limit in the park is 25 mph. One of the riders I spoke with said they were doing 65 in spots, too fast for even his taste (he was about 6'5" and built like a football player). Given six guys with hot dual-sport bikes and full gear...

The climax of the story is that after they left to go to a campground on the other side of the park (60 miles away), another rider came in (on a BMW R1200GS Adventure, for those interested). He said he had just seen them stopped up the road with a couple of Park Ranger vehicles. His great euphemism was "they were receiving performance awards". Given six guys with hot dual-sport bikes and full gear...

Today (Monday) we took a shorter ride, but one with spectacular views, up to Chisos Basin. It was 35 miles one-way and the last ten wound and twisted up into the Chisos Mountains, complete with 10 mph switchbacks and then down into the Basin, where the lodge and campground are located surrounded by the mountains. We stopped for lunch at the Chisos Mountain Lodge. It was a great ride; the salad bar was so-so.

We stopped at the Chisos Mountain visitor center where they had a map with recent sitings of mountain lions and black bears. The map had lots of stickers for the past several weeks including one of a mountain lion in the campground at 8:00 a.m.

The rest of the day we spent doing chores—laundry, generator, emptying and filling tanks, down-loading email and, finally, showers. Fortunately, we finished our showers just before the 60 or so teenagers from the group campsite showed up. There are three men's and three women's showers and when we left there were two long lines of kids stretching outside the building.

Just another warm, clear and sunny day in Big Bend.

Photos