Ahhh Texas, you’re a beautiful state, but you sure do have a bad reputation. Anyone who has ever driven across the state with their eyes glazed over says three things: it’s big, it’s boring, and it’s empty! But alas, while this may be true in some case, there is also a lot of variety. Think you know Texas? Take the quiz at the end of this post, outlining a few of the things we’ll be seeing over the next six weeks, and find out!
At Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site outside El Paso, a remote location boasts one of the largest concentrations of Native American rock paintings and inscriptions in North America, as well as the largest number of painted “masks.”
“Hueco” means “hollow” , with Hueco Tanks referring to the thousands of indents (both large and small) which hold water even when the surrounding desert is dry as a bone. This captured water supports a bunch of critters, up to and including freshwater shrimp, presumably the microscopic kind and not the kind you get on weekends at Costco.
Archaic hunters and gatherers lived here approximately 10,000 years ago and left behind hunting scenes and geometric designs. This is one continuous line!
To see many of them requires crawling, scrambling, and neck-craning, not to mention a park guide.
This is to protect the park resources, and also because you could never find nor interpret “the good stuff” on your own without them!
Native Americans called the Jornada Mogollon lived here starting around 1150. Scoffing at hunting scenes and geometics, they instead painted animals, birds and large-eyed faces or “masks.”
With more than 200 hidden throughout Hueco Tanks, this is the largest assemblage of masks in North America. This guy is the unofficial mascot of the park …. behold “The Starry Eyed Man.”
Even after the Spanish slowed their roll here, other Native Americans like the Kiowa and Mescalero Apache came to satisfy their thirst. Most recently, the Butterfield Overland Mail Line used Hueco Tanks as a relay station on its trail between St. Louis and San Francisco. Many-a-traveler in the 1800’s and 1900’s took the time to literally leave their mark on this place.
The inscription are similar to the excellent ones we enjoyed in New Mexico’s El Morro National Monument, although Texas travelers were perhaps more chauvanistic, as many of the inscriptions noted their dearly beloveds as simply “wife.”
What is astounding about all of these pictographs is their durability. How often do you have to paint your house … every 10 years?? And yet after hundreds or thousands of years, these representations remain.
The exception to the durability rule comes from vandalism and graffiti. (WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?) When priceless pictographs were being ruined or lost forever, something had to be done, so now the park now limits entry to only 70 people at a time. Security at this place is tighter than at a Michael Cohen deposition. However, what this means to visitors is that you have the mountain and trails nearly all to yourself at all times!
Hueco Tanks is a world-class “Bouldering” destination and rock climbers come from Japan, England, Germany and around the globe to climb here. Groups of climbers are easy to spot; they are the ones carrying what looks like folded mattresses on their backs. They are officially called “crash pads” and are super handy when you careen to the ground from high up.
Bouldering’ers (bouldereers?) are also easy to spot because they are on average 24 or younger, have 0.2% body fat, and seem to subsist on strictly beef jerky and Bud Light. Most of them tent camp in the area, regardless of the 23 degree temperatures overnight.
Hueco Tanks rocks (34 million years old, but who’s counting) are perfect for this demanding sport because of the many craters and hand-holds.
The white marks are leftover from chalk on the climbers’ hands. Winter is a popular time for bouldering because your hands are less likely to be sweaty as you are holding on for dear life.
The rocks have super cool names, and each rock can have multiple routes up. Who wouldn’t want to be able to announce, “Today I did Burn Baby Burn,” or Turtle Wax, or Call Me Ugly, or Rhymes With Rich? If only street names were so poetic.
Each of the routes is called a “problem” which I find hilarious because it would definitely be a problem for me and most everyone I know to do this sport. I gave it the ole college try and immediately threw my back out. So much for that.
The most-fun route to the top is called The Chain Trail, as it is fairly steep and so chains are embedded to aid you as your drag your sorry carcass skyward. (Although this was nothing compared to the Chain Trail at Picacho Peak State Park, more about that here.)
On the way to Hueco Tanks in Las Cruces, NM, we stopped to admire “The World’s Largest Roadrunner,” made entirely from recycled items.
It’s like a huge game of “I SPY” … I spy a crutch … I spy a computer keyboard … I spy a badminton racquet ….
We logged it along with other “World’s Largest’s” we’ve seen, including the World’s Largest Pistachio (Alamagordo, NM) and World’s Largest Paul Bunyan + Babe the Ox (Klamath (Redwoods), CA). Someday we will visit Casey, Illinois, which has the World’s Largest collection of World’s Largest Things!
OK, quiz time.
Can you guess where in Texas each of these can be found?
If not, stay tuned to our RV Blog over the next six weeks and learn a thing or two about some of the lesser-known attractions of Texas!
- one of the largest concentrations of Native American rock paintings and inscriptions in North America, as well as the largest number of painted masks (if you missed the answer to this one, there truly is no hope for you
- the fossilized remains of an enormous coral reef that formed when the state was covered by a sea
- the “Top of Texas” with a summit at over 8,000 feet of elevation
- one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars’ frontier military post in the Southwest
- a world-renowned observatory under some of the darkest night skies in the U.S.
- a hill where students hauled a desk in the 1980’s and where you can add your signature to a notebook left behind there
- the location of strange and unexplained phenomena and sourceless lights which began during the 19th century and continue to this day
- a delapidated ghost town where the dead in the cemetery outnumber the living in the town
- a ginormous national park made of 800,000 square acres
- the oldest winery in Texas, in continuous operation since 1883
- a working cattle ranch (whose museum has an employee named Tessa Miller) 🙂
- one of the largest aquariums in the U.S.
- the U.S.S. Lexington, known as “the Blue Ghost”
- miles of sandy beach that you can drive your vehicle upon for as far as you like
- a ferry which can handle RV’s and upon which we will attempt to drive the beast (yikes)
- alligators! oh my!
- a hiking and biking trail that runs through a park alongside herds of southern plain bison
- the “Grand Canyon of Texas,” second largest canyon in the U.S. (behind the Grand Canyon)
STAY TUNED FOR THESE AND MANY MORE coming soon to a blog near you!
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