Big Bend

From Wikipedia – Named for the prominent bend in the Rio Grande along the U.S.–Mexico border, this park encompasses a large and remote part of the Chihuahuan Desert. Its main attraction is backcountry recreation in the arid Chisos Mountains and in canyons along the river. A wide variety of Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils as well as cultural artifacts of Native Americans also exist within its borders.

• Established: 6/12/1944
• Annual Visitors: 440,091
• Size: 801,163 acres

On the Way to Big Bend National Park – October 30^th – November 1, 2020

On our way to Big Bend NP, we stayed in Weatherford, TX, halfway between Hot Springs NP in AR and Fort Stockton, TX (north of BBNP). We decided to take ‘back roads’ again today. Welcome to Texas, they do everything bigger, and in this case, faster as well. State Highway 206 and US 67 are mostly two-lane roads, one lane each direction, posted at 75 mph! No worries though, when there was a narrowing of the road for construction, they reduced the speed limit to 65! Yikes! True to why we love the “off the beaten path” options: we came across a corner store in Cross Plains, TX where we bought local pecans and dark chocolate covered almonds, yumm!

Our next destination, to stretch our legs, was preplanned after Gary researched it online. Colman City Park, in Coleman, TX looked like a great place to run Rangeley. We saw a man rolling a basket on the ground attached to the end of the pole. I asked him what he was doing. Ed, a sweet, local 80 yr. old had retired from the paper cutting business and was born, raised, and had married a local gal, here in TX. He said he was collecting pecans. He asked me to pick up two nuts, squeeze them together to crack one and eat the freshest pecans I had ever had, all while standing below the trees they just fell from!  He also opened a couple for me and asked me if I had a container so he could give me some from his satchel full of nuts slung over his shoulder. I thanked him and told him I had just bought some 20 minutes ago. I asked him if he collects them for himself and he told me he gets 50 cents a pound, exercise and enjoys the sunny days in the park. As I looked up, I realized the entire park was full of pecan trees! See pics. What a wonderful conversation with a lovely man. We so enjoy the locals at each of our stops along our travels. Rangeley ate a few nuts he found, shells and all, but they are not good for dogs so we won’t share our purchased ones with him! Not to mention I paid $16 for a pound and a quarter, making it sad that Ed only gets 50 cents a pound!

On our drive we passed large fields of cotton. Its planted in southwestern TX May-June and harvested September through December. We have fields of Pima Cotton, on the Pima Reservation near us in Phoenix. See pic.

Our lunch stop was at a really small-town gas station/market/cafe to feed Rangeley and gas up. I had to do the southern thang…I ordered corn bread fried catfish, creamed corn, a biscuit with honey and peach flavored sweet tay! 

In just a couple days we have spent time in the 19th century historical tourist driven town of Hot Springs, AR; to the hustle and bustle of the city in the business sections of Dallas/Fort Worth; to the flat, barren, miles and miles of wide open, expansive land in the gas, oil, wind and now solar energy producing southwest TX.  First Solar, Inc. has 2000 acres of panels that we passed on our way to Fort Stockton. First Solar’s world headquarters are in our neighboring town of Tempe, AZ.

Nov. 1, 2020

We took most of the AM to relax, enjoy breakfast, Gary caught up on business and we sadly planned the rest of our journey. We cannot believe we only have 4 more parks, out of 27, after Big Bend! 

We are staying in Fort Stockton, TX before we head to Big Bend NP tomorrow AM. We ventured out to James Rooney Memorial Park named after a prominent Fort Stockton man born in 1873. Rangeley enjoyed the bark park and we watched a few 20-30 yr. olds playing Disk Golf with their quite serious back packs and roller bags full of all kinds of disks.

We then stumbled upon a small scenic driving tour (set up by the city?) experiencing some late 1800’s history in this town. After the Civil War, some troops returned to Fort Stockton and we visited some of the buildings that were occupied in the late 1860’s. See plaques and more info are in the slide show attached. One of the pictures is a historical marker re: The Fort Stockton Guard House. It had a dungeon for the prisoners. A 40-yr.-old local man waited for us to return from the informational walking tour and told us he spent many weekends here with his cousins growing up. They would sneak into the Fort’s buildings and play in the dungeon. He had his 11 yr.-old-son with him and was proud to show him the Fort’s and this town’s history and made a point to share what he knew with us. Again, a fabulous example of meeting the wonderful local people in small town USA.

Tomorrow we head south to Big Bend National Park. Return to this same blog and we will add Part 2, our time inside the park! We will try and keep up, but the next 3 days will be very busy as we do 3 different parks, Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns.

Big Bend National Park Part 2 – November 2, 2020

Immediately after the left turn out of Fort Stockton’s west end it turned into, literally, thousands of barren acres. Flat mostly, a few rolling hills, for 59 miles into Marathon, TX. There was not a single cross road. We saw only three cars coming towards us and zero vehicles behind or in front of us. We took our first turn in 59 miles coming into Marathon, TX. We headed south to Big Bend National Park.

Big Bend is on the Texas/Mexican border. It was a total of 135 mi. From Ft Stockton to the Panther Junction Visitor Center inside Big Bend National Park. Once Marathon was in our rearview mirror we could now see beautiful rock formations, the Chisos Mountain range, Prickly Pear cactus, Ocotillos, creosote bushes and yucca plants. It was as though we were back in AZ.

We entered the park via the north entrance near the Persimmon Gap Visitor Center which is completely closed.

We stopped at the Fossil Discovery Exhibit. It is located in the northern section of the park and I found it pretty cool that there have been recent dinosaur findings as recent as 1999. It has rest rooms and a short hike to see the area from higher ground and a small family friendly section. All exhibits have cover but are open air…we’re back in the southwest!

26 miles south of the north entrance is Panther Junction Visitor Center where the rangers were at tables outside as the visitor center has been closed due to COVID. We always thank the rangers for their help and for being there so we can enjoy the parks under these ongoing health circumstances. I was able to get our pin, postcard and stamp our book.

Next stop was Chisos Basin Visitor Center where the Chisos Mountain Lodge and Restaurant are located. Neither appeared to be open but the gift shop and outdoor supply store was open and the visitor center also had tables out front with rangers answering questions and handing out maps.

Since this park is not particularly dog friendly, we enjoyed the views from the car on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. Loads of picturesque vistas. It’s roughly 30 miles to the park’s most southwestern visitor center, Castalon. Sadly, the Castalon valley was devestated by a wild fire in May 2019. The cafe and visitor center area were severely damaged so it is closed and under renovation. We did enjoy the beautiful views of what used to be cotton fields planted in 1923 in the valley below along with some interesting cotton harvesting equipment onsite from that time period. 

We continued to Santa Elena Canyon River Access further west and had a fun picnic lunch. It has a been a glorious sunny day in the mid 70’s. Rangeley swam a bit in the Rio Grande and we chatted with a wonderful young family from Nashville that have been on the road since June, in a small camper with their 3 and 5 yr.-old boys. They are visiting family and touring the US teaching their sons hands on learning.

Next stop in this vast wilderness park was Santa Elena Canyon Trailhead heading west yet again. The Rio Grande was 1/10 mi from the parking lot so Gary took Rangeley, and me on my crutches for stability on my now healing ankle, up the slightly uneven path to a very rocky beach and played by the river. The 1000 to 1,500 foot walls of the sandstone cliffs were impressive. We watched people wade, thigh deep, to get to the trail that you can take to a lookout. Enjoy the pics in slide show attached. Standing on the banks at this location, we could see livestock just on the other side in Mexico. The Rio Grande River is the border between MX and TX and in the eastern part of the park there is a row boat you can take to the Mexican side to have lunch in a town a mile from the river. The adventure sounded fabulous to Gary and I and we were sad to know that the dog and my ankle would preclude us from partaking…until…we heard that the self-guided, rustic and fun excursion was cancelled due to COVID. Maybe a Tequila brunch next time!

Are you still with us? : ) I know we planned a lot today but it’s been awesome! Last stop for us before we drive 80 miles north to Alpine, TX, our sleep headquarters for the night… Terlingua Ghost Town! See pictures of this unique and funky town in the slide show!

We passed through a US Customs check point station about 15 miles south of Alpine, TX after exiting the park. A couple of simple questions and we completed our tour of Big Bend National Park. There is so much more to see and do in this park but we chose wisely, in our humble opinion, for this visit.

Tomorrow we head northwest to Guadalupe National Park and the following day we will cover Carlsbad National Park!