2019 Road Trip: Day 4 & 5

Big Bend National Park

Have you ever been on the boarder of Texas and Mexico in June? I hope not. Now, I am not one to complain to about heat and hot weather, but here I am! Y’all, it was HOT. 110 degrees HOT. Luckily, I was able to get the last campsite in the Chisos Basin Campground where the weather was a little less hot. By “get the last campsite,” I mean I drive around until I saw this group of guys packing up and I sat at their campsite until they left. No shame in my game. Look at this beautiful campsite though!

Due to the extreme heat and an unforeseen event, I only camped in the park one night. The next day, I set out to hike early in the morning to beat the heat. However, before I was even a half of a mile into the hike, hikers were coming back down the trail saying there was some bear activity. So…no hiking that trail! With the heat setting in, I decided to just drive around the park. I drove the entire park and did a few short nature walks.

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The first stop was the Hot Springs Historic District. This was a very interesting area of the park that I could talk about for days, but I am going to leave a link for you to read if you are interested in learning the background of this interesting location! https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/historyculture/hotsprings.htm

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There are many older buildings and petroglyphs to explore on the way to the hot springs. It was much too hot that day for me to get into the springs, but there were other people visiting and taking a dip! It is located right on the Rio Grande, which is pretty cool too.

After visiting the hot springs, I drove down to the ghost town of Terlingua, which is located to the west of BBNP. I was not too impressed with this so-called ghost town. However, the cemetery there is worth visiting and not like cemeteries in Tennessee.

After visiting Terlingua, some things happened and I headed back to Alpine, Texas to regroup and get some rest. Overall, Big Bend National Park was beautiful and so overlooked! I would love to visit this park again when the weather is more agreeable.