Big Bend

In my last post I mentioned that we visited Big Bend National Park… I thought it deserved a mention here. Big Bend is a fairly large park. I remember visiting it when I was a kid. Camping and hiking, that’s my memory.. I was pretty young.

So I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. The campgrounds in the park are pretty far in. A long drive in with the RV, just to turn around 2 days later and take a long drive out. Instead, we decided to stay at a campground about 6 miles outside of the Eastern entrance to the park. The Campground was definitely nothing special, but as they say, location, location, location.

We got set up by 2pm or so then after dinner headed into the park hoping to get the lay of the land and see some wildlife at dusk. We took a loop drive in a more remote section of the park, and it was just as the shadows were getting long, a perfect time to see some animals, and we did see a few, Javelina, Mountain Goats, and Buffalo.

Big Bend West End

The next day we spent the majority of the day driving all remaining roads in the park. This park is primarily a hiking park. As we were really not in for hiking much we saw what we could see from the road, but that was a little disappointing. We did see a couple of hikes that if we were going to be there longer we would have taken.

I think the most interesting points were at the Southwestern corner of the park where we walked across the Rio Grande River, in water not even up to our ankles. We touched Mexico there and considered how the 1000 foot cliffs must keep illegals from crossing here (We were told be a ranger that Big Bend park has very little illegal crossings going on.) This hike which followed the river up a narrow canyon looked also like an interesting hike, but Mike didn’t feel up to it.

Big Bend East End

The other end of the park (the Southeastern corner, was also interesting as you could see across the river to a little town that a lot of touristas go to for lunch and shopping for Mexican trinkets after taking a boat across the river and riding a donkey into town. There service was available for a pittance. All things considered (Covid restrictions not withstanding) we did not partake in this activity either.

Hot springs

Mike really wasn’t feeling well this day, so one last stop we made was to the hot springs which was a 1 mile round trip hike up the river to a natural spring. Mike stayed in the car, while I walked up to see what that was about.

Being as large as the park is, it is hard to do it justice in a day. We did feel like we got the lay of the land, and know what Big Bend is about. We have enough information to put it on a list to come back another day. Will we? Only time will tell.