Gone to the Bend...

HERMANITAS RODRIGUEZ- Alma Vacia (Elena E-1005)
(This is actually the second time the sisters have popped up here. Dig around to find a better number by them. According to the liner notes they were based out of Del Rio/Acuna, though Elena was a southside Odessa label and probably the most prolific chicano label in West Texas. While "Empty Soul" is the title, my soul is anything BUT empty right now.)

I'm headed for that Bend in the Rio...

The 6 at Maria Elena's in Santa Elena, Mexico

Me and a housemate read an article about Boquillas, Mexico in a Texas Monthly back in the spring of 1996 and needed to go. We found four more travelers- all in all a group that wouldn't have actually spent time all together on a normal school weekend- and set off on the Thursday before Good Friday. Save the following two years, '97 and '98, the same 6- or Brave 6 as we like to refer to ourselves- have been doing the Bend once a year ever since. The most that have traveled without the total sum has been 4. But it only counts for the history when it's all 6. And we never have added a 7th, though people have asked.

A View of the Chisos from the Roy's Peak Corral, Easter '96

In the 9 trips since, we've created some damned nice traditions and memories. Steak night. Dutch oven peach cobbler. Midnight cigars at the hot springs down on the Rio. Climbing where people don't think to climb or wouldn't bother, and sometimes getting stuck there. Trips INTO Mariscal Mntn. Rapelling from the Alto Relex pour-off. Pre-9/11 there were tiny tacos in Boquillas and plate lunches at Maria Elenas in Santa Elena. We even accidently jumped an X-Terra across a dry creek bed on Old Ore Road. Some amazing memories are wrapped up in that place. And more are coming.

Looking South towards Mexico from Emory Peak

For our upcoming 10th trip we're looking a bit heavy... a climb up Lost Mine Peak (not trail), an assault on the Mesa de Anguila (that monsterous looking thing that makes up the US side of Santa Elena) via Bruja Canyon, and we'll wrap it all up with a trip to this spot which is a rare treat unless you know somebody which one of the 6 is fortunate to do. Feel like a boastful, giddy little kid.

Shrouded Chisos from Grapevine Hills Road

The Stomp will be back in a couple of weeks, provided Westex don't get stuck. And for what it may be worth, a grain of sand type thing, rangers do not like to hear stories about how you jumped stuff in a four wheeled vehicle.

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One of the region's treasures is Victor, the Singing Mexican of Boquillas Canyon...

Though not a Westie, Robert Earl Keen's "Gringo's Honeymoon" was the inspiration for the Boquillas story we read in Texas Monthly.