National Parks and Recreation

Now that I’ve talked this park and post up so much, strap in! I didn’t officially count, but I’m pretty sure I had more pictures for this post than any other. This part of Texas just simply blew me away.

We started the day lazily. We lounged around the AirBNB, reading and hanging out for awhile. It was just such a beautiful morning.

We also had to wait for this BBQ place/brewery to open. This was at Brick Vault Brewery and Barbecue, right before the turn toward Big Bend. It was the perfect fuel-up for our jam-packed 72 hours in the mountains.

From there, we turned down route 385 and the desert sky opened up around us.

And I spent the next two hours repeatedly slapping James on the arm because I couldn’t believe how absolutely stunning everything was. Pictures don’t do it justice. I just couldn’t believe how BIG it all was. It sounds dumb, but that’s the best way to describe it. It felt like you could see forever.

Finally, we crossed the border into the national park. Not that you would be able to tell. The only difference was that you could finally see some mountains out on the horizon.

I’ve realized now that neither James nor I got any pictures of our campsite at Big Bend. My theory is that we were so cold most of the time we were there that we just didn’t get the chance (but more on that to come). We stayed at the Chisos Basin Campground at an elevation of 5,400 feet. Strangely, I don’t remember ever feeling too sick. Probably because we were constantly driving all around the park that ranged from 1,500 ft to 6,600 feet so the altitude could never quite get to me.

Luckily, about a week before we left I got a reminder email that I had booked a campsite in Big Bend. I vaguely remembered reserving it in advance, but thought to myself, ‘Cool! One less thing to worry about.’ Hah. Little did I know that if I hadn’t done that, we quite literally wouldn’t have had a place to stay. Apparently everyone had the same idea as us to travel here during Christmas vacation and every single campground was full. We even heard rumors that even in nearby towns, none of the hotels/motels had any vacancy. Thanks, past Nicole!

We made our way to our reserved site, set up the tent, and then immediately left for Santa Elena Canyon. Our campsite was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the park, but it was still about an hour and a half drive over to the Western edge. (Did I mention it was big?)

Of course I climbed on some rocks. The Santa Elena Canyon Trail was confusing at the start. I really didn’t think we were going the right way, but we just blindly followed everyone else. It basically involved crossing a small stream and then climbing straight up a sandy hill and following a maze of man-made paths through the brush to get to the trail. It definitely didn’t seem right, but we finally got to the correct trail and I didn’t see any other way to get over there so maybe it was!

I don’t have too many pictures from inside the canyon. With the way the sun was setting, it was really hard to get any decent lighting anywhere. It was really cool though. In the picture above, I am (obviously) standing in the US and the wall on the right side of the picture, across the Rio Grande, is Mexico. This was my first time seeing the Rio Grande and it was really cool! We walked maybe half a mile along this natural border, deeper into the canyon. Someday we’ll go back and do one of the floating boat tours down the river. Just make sure you don’t accidentally get out of your boat on the wrong side!

We took our time driving back up the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, including a stop here to see the “Mule Ears.”

And then we set up at Sotol Vista to watch the sunset. It blew me away. I did absolutely zero editing to the picture below. And it was shot on my iPhone 6s.

Then we got back to camp in the dark and had another dinner in our car (mostly leftovers). And the temperature started to drop. I spoke on this briefly in my last post, but I was a bit nervous about overnight temps. I obsessively stalked the weather for the weeks leading up to it and it didn’t seem too bad, but I could only find weather in the nearby towns. And where we were staying in the Chisos Basin area was almost 20 degrees colder than other parts of the park.

Back in 2018, when James and I did a tour of the Southwestern national parks, we faced a similar conundrum. Back then, I panicked the night before we flew out and booked a few extra motel rooms and ditched our camping plans altogether. (Which ended up being the right call because it was 9 degrees in Flagstaff when we woke up one morning). But I was determined to make it work this trip! We were already lugging all of our camping gear and we were going to use it, damnit!

James’ sleeping bag is rated for 21 degrees and mine was 30, so I decided to pick up some of these sleeping bag liners from REI before we left. They said they added an extra 15 degrees of warmth. I was skeptical, but knew we’d need to at least try something.

So cut to that first night of camping in Big Bend. I was starting to feel a little better when I saw just how packed the campground was. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of people all camping out in their tents. Truly, it couldn’t be that bad. And then I made the mistake of accidentally seeing the weather guide posted on the bathroom: “Overnight low: 22 degrees.” Yikes. Welp, here went nothing.

We hurried into the tent, wearing double layers of clothes, super socks, and winter hats. We climbed into our special liners and zipped our sleeping bags up as far as they’d go and prepared to shiver all night. And then something miraculous happened. The liners actually worked!! Almost too good. About an hour later, I was taking off my socks and extra pants. Shedding my sweatshirt and almost taking off my hat at one point. It was so warm! I started thinking maybe the weather inexplicably turned in the night.

Not the case. We woke up to ice everywhere. Our water bottles were frozen over. It took 5 minutes to defrost our windshield. It had definitely been cold. But not in our sleeping bags. So I cannot recommend these enough! I truly think it could’ve been close to 0 degrees and we still would’ve been fine.

Moving on:

After quickly getting ready in the frigid morning air, we made our way up to the Lost Mine Trail. We got an early start (mostly because we were awake and it was freezing), but I knew it would still be iffy to find a spot at the trailhead. It’s one of the most popular hikes in the park. One the way up, I saw one spot left at a small parking area about half a mile before the trailhead and decided to just jump on it. There might’ve been spots at the trailhead, but I didn’t want to risk it.

The hike itself was really nice! About 4 and a half miles out and back. It wasn’t long before we could look back toward our campground (near that pointy rock in the middle of the above photo). It was pretty crowded, but we could easily get around people.

And the higher up we got, the more beautiful it was. The end was pretty level, with the trail just following this ridge.

According to my app, we ended up hiking a little bit past the official end of the trail, but there was no real marker. We just kept walking until we came to a large boulder in the way. I climbed up it to look around and realized that we would plunge thousands of feet off the mountain if we went around it. Well, I guess that’s the end of the trail!

We hung out at the top for awhile, climbing on rocks and leaning over my favorite boulder.

This rock, that I dubbed the Backward Pac Man rock, was also at the end of the trail. I tried so hard to climb up into its “mouth” with no success. Defeated, I still made James go back down the trail a little bit to get my picture standing next to it.

I’m in the above picture if you look closely. But how cool would it have been if I was standing in that triangular gap?? I’m still not over it.

Having seen the western edge of the park the previous evening, we decided to round out the trip and check out the eastern edge. We drove another 45 minutes down the beautiful road back to the Rio Grande.

We did a nice and short nature trail there that brought you up a hill to see for miles and miles. The mountains behind my head are back where we just were on the Lost Mine Trail. Our campsite is also in there somewhere.

Looking the other way, we could see into the Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen. There’s a short ferry ride you can take to cross over into Mexico. But I’ve already been and we didn’t bring our passports.

Instead, we went back up the road to check out the Hot Springs. This is a naturally occuring 105 degree pool, right on the edge of the Rio Grande. It was pretty cool (not literally). We had no desire to actually go in, but it was cool to see.

Having seen both ends of the park, there was only one last hike that we wanted to get in.

The Window Trail was a hike that ran right through our campground. It went from the visitor center, through our campground, and down to that gap (window) to the right of the pointy rock. It said “day-use only” on the sign and we were very nearing sunset, but there was no way I wasn’t going to fit it in. This was one of those trails where you go downhill on the way out and hike uphill on the way back, so we figured as long as we could half jog down to the bottom before sunset, we’d be fine and wouldn’t have to use our headlamps too much (or get yelled at by the rangers).

The beginning of the trail was simple and easy. As we got close to the end though, it got really cool. These stairs were carved into the rocks and crossed back and forth over this small stream of water that cuts through the mountains. We later learned that all the rainwater they get in the Chisos Mountains drains down this trail, through these rocks, and pours out the back of the “window.” Pretty cool stuff. There wasn’t too much water on this December evening.

Finally, we reached the end. Right on cue at sunset. Another trail that makes it very obvious that you have reached the end, as the water plunged off the side of a cliff. We weren’t the only ones there when we got there. And definitely weren’t the last ones to leave. Yay to not being the only rule-breakers!

There was a group of young people when we first got there standing very close to the edge. It was really freaking me out. And I love hanging off the edge of rocks. But you couldn’t see how far down it went and it was literally the top of a waterfall so all the rocks were wet and slippery. I basically had to turn around and make James tell me when they were done. (So there you go, mom, I’m just as much of a nervous Nelly as you, I just like taking pictures that look like I’m dangerously hanging off of cliffs.)

This was about as close as I was willing to get. It would’ve been cool to see what the waterfall looks like past the edge, but I wasn’t going to risk it. The Oak Spring Trail diverges from the Window Trail a little ways up and circles around to the bottom so you can see it looking back up toward the window. I would love to check that out next time!

As the sun continued to set and the time ran out on our “day use only” trail, we began the ascent back to our freezing cold campground.

Our timing ended up being absolutely perfect. The light of the golden hour reflecting off the mountains was beautiful.

And then the sun did finally set into a purply sky. I chose my two favorites below, but I took at least 30 pictures on our way back up of just the purple sky, the moon, and the silhouette of the surrounding mountains. It was amazing.

I mean…

Again, we downed some food in the semi-warmth of the car and changed into our warm clothes (it was forecasted to be even colder tonight), but it was still pretty early since the sun sets so soon in the winter. We decided to kill some time by heading up to a ranger talk by the visitor center. It was a fascinating slideshow about the different climates and weather patterns of the park throughout the year. I really enjoyed it. A reminder to always check out the ranger programs when you go to the national parks!

One of the things we were most excited for being in Texas was the night sky. And it did not disappoint. Unfortunately, it was so cold that we couldn’t really stand to lie outside for too long to watch the stars. I’d love to go back sometime in warmer weather, I could just stare at the sky forever. But this trip was mostly just fleeting glances as we sprinted from the semi-warmth of our car to the not-quite-warmth of our tent.

The next morning was another long drive as we sadly said goodbye to the national parks and headed back east to Dallas. We didn’t necessarily mean to wake up for sunrise, but we were both up (because again, it was freezing), so off we went.

And we were rewarded with a beautiful desert sunrise our entire drive back to the interstate.

Don’t worry, West Texas, we will be back just as soon as we can!

Three Things You Can’t Miss:

• Lost Mine Trail
• Santa Elena Canyon
• The sunset, literally anywhere