A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, Jason and I did the unthinkable. We took our 18-month old daughter on a 1,900 mile, 10-day road trip to Big Bend Ranch State Park…and we were camping…and I’m pregnant.
Yeah, there’s a bombshell for you. I bet you weren’t expecting that.
Adventure is an understatement.
We packed up all our camping equipment, the kid, the dog and all the things that go with the kid and the dog. We also packed our ski gear – because our well planned camping adventure came during the worst cold snap of the year. At its coldest, it was 27 degrees. Did I mention we were tent camping?
Guess what the temperature was inside the tent?
That’s right. 27 degrees.
Burrrrr.
We didn’t just go camping. We went backpacking, offroading, hiking and primitive camping. We dragged our poor little girl to the other side of nowhere and back again on an adventure so grand that, now anytime she wants to do something fun, she says, “TRUCK! KEYS! BEEP!”
Only fun things happen in the truck.
Of course, we could have chosen to go to Disneyworld or some other child friendly location but that would have been too easy. We’ve never done things the easy way. What better way to spend time as a family than by visiting a place where you have to dig a hole before you go to the bathroom and getting attacked by a mountain lion is a legitimate concern.
All joking aside, Big Bend Ranch State Park was incredible, a truly unique experience that I will write a separate post about.
We took three hours of video and over 600 pictures. Don’t worry, I don’t have enough cloud space to share them all with you but I did make a cute little video which I’ve posted on YouTube. If you’d like to go on a little piece of our trip with us you should watch it.
After our epic adventure, I can truly say that I have never been more proud to be from and live in Texas. It’s a place full of topographic and cultural diversity and I cannot imagine living in any other place. Though, maybe on our next trip we’ll actually decide to leave the state.