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.

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.

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.

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.

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.