Day 7 – Big Bend National Park

Posted byDerek 3 Comments on Day 7 – Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park is awesome! And huge! And remote! And hot! 801,163 acres and it seems even larger because you’re overlooking into the same remote area of Mexico. We spent the entire day in the park. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the elevation of the west. We have been between 2500 and 3500 feet most of the day. The highest I saw on the GPS was 5500 ft. Emory Peak tops out at 7,825 ft. Texas has mountains! Who knew??? Well, I didn’t anyway. Even Texas has higher mountains than we do in the east.

Chisos Basin campground. This was the highest road today.

I took a lot of pictures today with the helmet camera, but like a dummy, the SD card is still in the camera and covered up on the bike. It’s late and I’m beat, so those will have to wait until tomorrow night. These are from the little Canon PowerShot. Most of the day was kinda overcast and hazy, so the colors don’t show well. Seems like after a spectacular day, the pictures are always a little bit of a letdown.

Boquillas Canyon and the Rio Grande. Bit of a hike but worth the effort. U.S. on the left and Mexico on the right. This entire area is so rugged and remote, I don’t think illegal crossings are much of an issue in this entire area. Very few people could actual survive long in this environment without services available.
This is Boquillas Crossing. If you do want to cross legally, this is it. The cluster of buildings on the left is the Mexican village of Boquillas. If you bring your passport, you can hire locals to row you across the river and you can have lunch and shop for handmade pottery and such in a quaint Mexican village. This is legit…the US park service and border patrol oversee it. So, if you visit Big Bend, do bring your passport unlike Don and I.

This place really is spectacular and worth a visit. If you like to hike, plan on a few days here. If you are driving and sightseeing with maybe an occasional short hike, two days might be enough. At any rate, don’t visit in the summer. October through April is the ticket. I saw 94 degrees today. Low humidity but that sun is seriously intense. A lot of cacti in bloom. I thought we saw wild burros and horses today. Turns out these are not actually wild but feral livestock that wanders in from Mexico. I guess there is a little illegal crossing after all.

Do you see the notch in the dark cliff located in the center of the photo? That is Santa Elena Canyon and 14 miles away.
And this is Santa Elena Canyon close up. It is 8 miles long and 1500 feet deep. The true scale of the American west just can’t be appreciated in pictures.

We pack up camp in the morning and will drop back into Big Bend once more and then catch FM170 west along the Rio Grande which is supposed to be a spectacular road. We eventually loop around and start back east into civilization. I’m not quite ready.

A lot of road bikes here, but also a lot of dual sport bikes as well. This place has hundreds of miles of gravel and dirt roads.

Between the haze and the moon, I didn’t get any star pictures this trip but I did get some of the sunset. Good night from Marathon.

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