Waking up our last morning in New Mexico we felt a bit strange. We had only spent 4 days (our shortest stay in any state where we had spent the night) but per weather issues we had to move on. After eating breakfast and packing up we hit the road. El Paso is only about 45 miles south of Las Cruces with the Texas border only being 30 miles so we were not far away. Just prior to crossing the border we exited the highway. We love taking pictures with state signs and this is usually difficult from the highway. We looked on a map and found a few small roads crossing the state border and took one of them. Not too long after we found our welcome to Texas sign and snapped a few pictures. We then found our way back to the highway and headed into El Paso.
El Paso, for those of you that are unaware is in far west Texas. By far west I mean as far west in Texas as you can possibly go. It might as well be in its own state. It is the only city in Texas in the Mountain Time Zone. The rest of the state is in the Central Time Zone. It’s also very by itself in geographical terms. The next biggest city in Texas is San Antonio, which is an 8-hour drive east. It’s also the only Texas desert city. All of this makes this part of Texas and El Paso very unique. El Paso driving in looked like a pretty nice city. The highway, which is on top of a hill, takes you between the University of Texas at El Paso and the Mexican city of Cuidad Juarez. It’s pretty neat to see a nice university on your left and you look down to a river and Juarez on the other side. We exited the highway and found parking downtown and started to walk around.
While it looked like many city improvement projects were going on it soon became apparent to us that while El Paso did look nice, most of the storefronts were empty. After walking a bit further we did find pockets of nice shops in the city (and a cool coffee shop built in shipping containers) but overall we just didn’t find much to do downtown. That’s ok though, more to see. We hopped back into Bubbles and headed toward the University area. The University is located next to one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city so we decided to take a tour of some of the houses. The house tour didn’t take as long as we had hoped so we needed something else to do. We had spotted a Top Golf just outside of town and decided to go have some fun. Neither of us had ever been to a Top Golf before and we wanted to check it out. For those that don’t know Top Golf is a 21st century driving range of sorts. Once checked in you get your own area with a waiter/waitress for food and drink. For the golf part it is a driving range although instead of distance markers you have circular areas to shoot at. The ball you shoot is micro chipped and depending on the target you hit determines how many points you get. The whole experience there was a lot of fun and one that we would definitely do again. From Top Golf we stopped at a grocery store then checked into the campground for the night.
The next day we woke up ready for a travel day. Today we would be driving to Terlingua, located just outside of Big Bend National Park. This is a 5 hour drive from El Paso with most of it being on 2 lane roads, our favorite. After an hour and a half or so on I-10 our route took us off the highway and towards the park. Along the way we passed through the tiny town of Marfa. Marfa is known as being a very artistic town miles away from anything. It’s most famous art installation would be Marfa’s Prada store. A Prada store in Marfa, Texas you ask? Why yes…well sort of. It is an actual small storefront door and all (nonfunctional of course) with actual Prada merchandise in it from 2005 (the year it was created). Whatever the artists vision for the piece was it is a very unusual sight to see amongst the vast ranches and mountains in west Texas. A few small towns and hours later we finally reached our campground in Terilingua.
Waking up the next morning was beautiful. Opening our door to a view of desert mountains never gets old. This was also very surprising for me. Growing up I had lived in the Dallas area for a few years so my idea of Texas was generally a flat grassland type landscape. I had no idea that in a short 9-½ hour drive southwest from Dallas existed this awesome desert national park. Our first stop for the day was Panther Junction, the parks headquarters. Here we picked up a few maps, consulted with rangers about hiking trails that would fit in our timeline for the day as well as overlooks that we should check out. First stop for the day was the parks biggest camping area of Rio Grande Village. This part of the park was the furthest from the parks border and was located directly on the Rio Grande River. It was also very unique as this part of the park is filled with cotton wood trees and grass. We found out that this was due to settlers in the 1800’s trying to farm this area and created irrigation canals. The most amazing thing was that while farming did work (although the farmers did abandon the settlement due to Indian raids) the irrigation canals were still working and feeding the cottonwood and fruit trees left by the settlers. We hiked a few trails in this area, one taking us directly to a sand bar in the river. It was really neat standing with our feet in the river that is the actual southern physical border of our country while nonchalantly skipping rocks over to the Mexican side.
From the Rio Grande Village we drove over to see the only international border crossing in a national park. The tiny town of Boquillas is just over the border on the Mexican side. After going through US customs you can either walk through the river if its shallow or pay a guide $5 to take you across the river in a rowboat. Once in Boquillas you can take in a few shops or restaurants before returning to the rowboat man and getting rowed back to the US side. As we had already flown down to Guadalajara, Mexico we didn’t feel the urge to cross again but did think it was neat that you actually could here.
From the border area we drove up to Chisos Basin. This area was high up in the mountains and it was really neat to see the landscape change as we went up. Most of the park is around 1000 feet above sea level but Chisos Basin is 5000 feet plus. Going from desert cactus and brush to pine trees was pretty neat to see in the span of a few minutes. After a steep, challenging drive we finally made it to the Big Bend hotel where we took a small mountain hike then sat down and enjoyed a beer while we took in the mountain views all around us. It was pretty neat sitting in the mountains in Big Bend National Park drinking a Lone Star Beer and thinking how lucky that we are. Once we were done with our beverage we took another short hike before hopping back into Bubbles and making our way back to Terlingua for the night.
Before we went to bed that night we were talking about just how awesome Big Bend had been. We didn’t know what to expect when we decided to see it and honestly had not done that much research into the park prior. This turned out to be one of the most unique and fun national parks that we have visited so far.
Just a note for those of you thinking of visiting Big Bend National Park…..It is one of the largest, least visited and remote parks in the entire National Park System. Besides a small hotel in the park there is not much in terms of lodging unless you have a tent or RV. It is also a hike to get to as the closest major cities are El Paso (5 hours away) or San Antonio (8 hours away). Don’t be discouraged by all of this though, Big Bend has turned out to be one of our favorite parks on this entire trip!
Next up…. We drive across the state to meet up with friends and see/eat all that Houston has to offer!
