Ward’s Adventure Travel Research & Trip Journal

Dad and I talk about the next trip. Then we take the next trip, bringing Jack and Joe along with us. For any single ladies in the world, Joe offers his unique value proposition and leaves his phone number at the end.

Moving forward with our next backpacking trip. Spent this episode discussing the options for an inexpensive vehicle that could double as a hard-shelled camper. We discuss the downsides of camping in truck toppers and panel vans--mainly the potential creepiness factor, thanks to a couple of infamous psychopaths who have used the same for kidnapping people and transporting bodies. After discussing it, we agreed we may be wise to find an alternative solution. We'll see.

Once we get our motorcycles to Lake McBride, we end up talking about hiking, backpacking, and camping--specifically about retrofitting a truck or a van into a motel on wheels for our future trips to national parks.

We'll be doing a few motorcycle adventures over the coming months. This is our first episode along those lines. We start talking about it near the end.

Finally making this lost episode public... This one is for true fans of the show, those who deserve to hear it. Please comment if you'd like to hear us do more podcasts, because we are considering how best to use our time in 2015 and beyond. Any feedback will help.Note: This episode was recorded prior to the Big Bend Trip, but it is just as apt today as it was then (perhaps even more apt).

Part 5 of 5 of our Big Bend Nation Park trip. This will be our final podcast episode for a while, as we decide on where we'd like to backpack next.

Part 4 of 5

Part 3 of 5 in Big Bend National Park

Part 2 of 5 in Big Bend National Park.

Dad and I podcast live from Big Bend National Park. The first half is from our campsite the Tuesday evening we arrive. The second half is Wednesday during a lunch break while hiking Window trail.Partial Transcript:Bob: Okay, we're live. Ward's Adventure Travel Research and Trip Journal, and guess where we're at...Big Bend National Park. We're sitting here at our campsite.Dave: Big Bend, Texas.Bob: Big Bend, Texas.Dave: And you wouldn't believe it, but it's chilly here in Big Bend, Texas.Bob: It's going to be in the lower 30's tonight.Dave: Yes, and Bob and I are sitting here at a picnic table in our winter coats. You'd think we were in Iowa, snow blowing around us.Bob: Well, at least there's no snow. It is a bit chilly, but this is really cool because the basin is actually a bowl surrounded by these cliffs.Dave: Really high cliffs.Bob: And the campsite is nestled right down into this bowl. It's just the sweetest thing. So right now the sun has dipped, it's six-thirty p.m on the 17th of February. The sun has dipped down below the ridgelines, and we still see some sunlight shining on these ridges to the east, these peaks.Dave: We should post some pictures so they can see, because this really is cool.Bob: Yeah, but my camera's in the truck. So we've cooked our dinner, we've eaten, we've got our tents pitched, and it's a really laid-back campground, really nice, smaller than I'd thought it was looking from the aerials, it's smaller.Dave: Yeah, there's probably 20 people here, 20 campers. And there's a few tents, and a few hard-shelled campers.Bob: The campground is apparently all full, booked and reserved.Dave: It is? Well, who are these people?Bob: I noticed what they do is put a sign on a pole, on a campsite. Like ours says Bob Ward, and it says 16th thru 22nd. Now the one over there says some other person's name, 19th thru 22nd. So that's going to be unoccupied for two more days.Dave: Oh, I see, and then...Bob: Somebody is going to come in.Dave: I think all of ours are tents only, the ones we're going to be in. Aren't they?Bob: Well, they're...Dave: There's no place for them to park here.Bob: Some of them have a parking stall that has been paved into the campsite a bit, and if you have a camper you can park there. Or if you have a car, you can park on that. Ours just has a little parking spot for a car off the campsite. Well, we've got to talk about our impressions. So we left Monday. We should talk about the trip out here, how that went, and our initial impressions about everything.Dave: Well, this was kind of a nice trip from me, because Bob did 95% of the driving, because I had a cataract operation on my right eye, so I've got one eye and the other eye is healing, so I see about...well, if you stood in front of me I might be able to tell you were there, with my right eye. With my left eye I can see 20/20, but it's still a strain to just use one eye. Anybody who's never been one-eyed before--that's most of us--you don't realize what a benefit that second eye is, giving you a depth perception and an ability to move around things, so if I come by somebody, if they're on my right side, I'm liable to knock them down, just not even realize I'm that close because my depth perception is off. And so Bob did most of the driving, which left me there to snooze away, which was okay. I didn't mind that.Bob: On Monday we left at nine o'clock in the morning. Then we got off the road, I think at ten. We drove for 12 hours, so we must have gotten off the road at nine. We drove from our place all the way to, what was the town...?Dave: Witchita Falls, Texas.Bob: Just across the boarder of Texas, and then we got a really great LaQuinta Inn for sixty bucks, and we slept from about 11 p.m. until five, and got up at 5 a.m., and we were in the car and on the road at five-twenty. And then we drove the rest of the way. So today we drove another eight hours.Dave: Yeah, we got in here about two o'clock, two-thirty, somewhere in there.Bob: No,