Day 3 – Big Bend National Park
Big Bend was another place I had only discovered through road trip research and the photos once again sold me on it. We got an early start and headed south from Fort Stockton to Marathon, TX. We stopped in Marathon, about an hour outside of the park for some gas and coffee. As we headed toward what we thought was the park we could see that we were driving straight into a very black sky. While disappointing that our day trip might end up rained out we were both enthralled by how scary the sky looked and were slightly excited to possibly see a great thunderstorm. Probably a good 20 minutes into heading toward that thundercloud we discovered that we were not heading toward Big Bend at all. We had taken the wrong highway and were heading west instead of south. Getting slightly lost is always frustrating but the good thing was that meant we weren’t heading into a storm after all!
We finally made it to the park entrance after passing a few wild pigs and stopped in the visitor center for some tips and to refill our water. The park was huge and had a lot to offer. Sitting in the Chihuahuan Desert are the Chiso Mountains and the Rio Grande river so you really get three different ecosystems here. If you love geology this is the place for you with all of the different rock formations. There are ancient cliff paintings and a natural hot spring along the Rio Grande, various river activities, canyons to explore, forests to hike through, and hundreds of thousands of acres of back-country. Big Bend was well worth driving a bit off course to see and I wished that we could have stayed longer and camped there. Since we couldn’t possibly see it all in a day…probably not in a lifetime, we picked a few things on the map that would give us good variety. First we headed up to Chisos Basin which was really windy and cold. We bundled up in our winter coats and took a short hike out to a vista called The Window for a really great view.
We then headed back past the visitor center and drove quite a ways through desert area down to the Rio Grande and Boquillas Canyon. Here we could see across the beautiful river into Mexico. Horses grazed on bright green grass and a guy who looked to me like a genuine cowboy rode up and down the river. My only guess was he was patrolling the border. We could see evidence everywhere of the Mexican townspeople sneaking across the border to leave various handmade trinkets and money collection containers. We hiked as far as we could into the canyon along the river. I couldn’t get over the variety of things we saw. Interesting rock formations, quartz crystals growing in the canyon walls, small bamboo forests along the trail, orange rock straight up to the blue sky with the contrasting cool river water flowing through.
After our hike we headed toward our last destination in the park, a natural hot spring. The short hike out to the spring had some trail markers pointing out ancient cliff paintings although we were unable to spot any. The hot springs were naturally occurring but a man-made stone container wall had been built around it to separate it from the cold water of the river. Perhaps the first “infinity pool”? We had the place to ourselves for awhile and we soaked in the water for a bit as the sun began to dip low in the sky. It was the most peaceful and relaxing part of our trip.
After drying off and doing a stealth quick change into dry clothes we hit the road until we got to another Motel 6 in Kerrville, Texas. We were way ahead of schedule at this point mostly thanks to Acacia. There were multiple times she suggested we press on and cover more ground. I don’t think I could have done this trip on my own.
you have a gift in writing. loved the love between you and Acacia.
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