San Antonio was amazing. This was the first time Amy and I had ever stepped foot in the state of Texas, the first steps onto the desert floor of the Big Bend National Park.

It didn’t take long to realize that Texas is a really big state. We thought for sure it must be the biggest in the United States. It actually comes in at #2 with over 268,000 square miles of real-estate. Alaska is a lot bigger we found out with California coming in at third, Montana in fourth with New Mexico following in fifth place.

From our home in Florida to San Antonio we clocked in at least twenty-one hours of drive time wheels rolling. We drove for another six or so hours to reach our first national park, Big Bend.

We drove across this vast state stopping at little towns along the way. One of these towns was that of Uvalde. A school shooting had just occurred days before we got there and passed through the town. It was a very sad moment in time as we passed by the school. May GOD bless those families in this town! It appeared they were having a service of some type as we drove by. We bought some gasoline and headed out in silence. Such a horrific event to have happened.

At times it felt like we were in a Twilight Zone episode. The middle of complete, “Nothingness.” It was as if we had reached the end of the planet. We came upon a huge building suddenly and at first glance we thought it was some type of toll road structure. Turns out it was not, it was our first boarder patrol checkpoint.

Waiting for our turn at the boarder patrol checkpoint

I pulled the van up to the uniformed agent. He asked if it was only us two in the van and I told him yes. He asked if we were US citizens and we told him yes. He told us to have a nice day. We drove on. That was it. I do wonder, as my mind is very imaginative to say the least, if somehow, with some cool device, did they scan our vehicle? The agent definitely didn’t look inside to see if we had stowaways. Maybe I’ll look that up. Yes, I need to know, lol. Not because I was doing something wrong, I just love information is all.

Covered picnic table in the middle of NoWhere Texas

I brought the van back up to the speed limit and we were on our way again. Along the way we saw this sign on the side of the highway. It was an enormous sign with a yellow background, bright, very bright yellow. There was no way to miss this sign in fact. I wanted to stop but kept driving. Amy looked over at me and said, “C’mon Markis, you know you wanted to stop and get a picture.” She was very right, always right, geez. I made a u-turn and headed back, five miles back to take a picture in front of this sign, with my thumb out. I forgot to tell you what the sign said, sorry. It said, “Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates.”

Although taking a picture in front of this sign made Amy and I both giggle, the sign was there for a good reason right? Was there a prison nearby? Did they have people escape at some time or another and therefore had this sign put up? Is it because we were getting closer to the Mexican border? Now my imaginative self was telling me this was a great idea for a future story. At the same time my thoughts were telling me they hoped I didn’t get a flat tire anytime soon or see any real hitchhikers along the road. Ha.

A funny sign to take a picture with. A creepy feeling sign as well.

A short hike down, the view of the reservoir was so amazing.

Amistad National Reservoir on the way to Big Bend

A shot of the glowing waters on our right.

The bridges of steel.

We drove west forever. We burnt through several of our iTunes playlists along the way. We past a few of these picnic stops on the side of the road with metal benches and overhangs. We decided to stop and make some sandwiches for lunch (Picture above). We watched in awe as the highway became a sort of raceway. Cars and trucks whizzed by us at record speeds. I know out west the speed limits are higher but these vehicles were traveling at the speed of sound. We enjoyed Amy’s sandwiches and the coolness of being underneath the covered tables. On full stomachs we pushed on.

A short time later we entered the National Amistad Recreational Area. We crossed these amazing bridge (see photos above and on the left of this column) that appeared very old. The colors of the road were brilliant in combination of the bridge on our left and the glow of the water below on both sides. It was just so surreal, hard to describe how the scene makes you feel. Amazing on the eyes. Once we crossed the bridge I carefully guided the Aloha over some gravel rocks on the side of the road. The road led down to the bottom of the bridge and a gorgeous view of the water. I didn’t feel comfortable driving across the jagged rocks even if they were small ones. I parked us and we hoofed it on foot for a short distance to get some incredible shots.

We continued along 90 West until we arrived at a small town called, Marathon. When I say small I mean small. My fear in Texas was because of its size I worried we would run out of gas. So I filled up as often as I could even if it was just to top the gas tank off. I was bound and determined not to run out of gas in the desert. We have never used the extra containers we’ve seen attached to vehicles and campers (that allow you to carry extra fuel) but now we are thinking about getting some, it couldn’t hurt. Running out of gas in a desert didn’t sound like a good time at all. We filled our tank and took the turn off onto US 385.

The isolation of this park is a reason many people come to visit. We warn you now however, it also means your trip must be well planned out. You need to make special preparations to visit this park. It is a considerable distance from any of Texas’s big cities. There are no public transportation services that take you to the park or within the park. You are on your own. They do have two places that we know of within the park that provide gasoline for purchase (cost is very high). We didn’t know this going in, only hoped and prayed there would be places to get gas. The park is huge and you will spend plenty of time driving it to get to different destinations within it. There are four camp stores in the park but supplies can be limited. We will discuss this later on when we arrive at our campground, but know this going in, make sure you are prepared.

We found the Big Bend National Park sign and of course we stopped to get some selfies! We passed through a closed guard shack and entered the park. It was so freaking beautiful. The weather called for a heat wave. Yeah! We left that kind of weather in Florida, so we had thought. Texas is a dry heat, like hundreds of blow dryers pointed at your face at the same time on full speed! At times during our visit to the park, we didn’t know our bodies needed water. We made it a point to drink water and fluids all day long even if only sips at a time. We learned this from our 12 Days in Utah trip we took a couple of years ago. It can catch up to you fast if you are not careful. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

It took us almost another hour to reach the first visitor center, the Panther Junction. It was closed at the time we arrived. I saw they had gasoline there for sale, but it was closed. I looked down at the gas gauge. We had used almost half a tank to get to this point in the park. We had another 30-40 minute drive to our campground. Even though the sun stays up late in the west, we feared we would get there in the dark. We also hoped it had gasoline we could purchase in the morning. Luckily, we reached the campground and learned it did have a store and gas pumps (closed also upon our arrival).

There are three campgrounds within Big Bend National Park. The three campgrounds are the Chiso Basin Campground, the Cottonwood Campground, and the Rio Grande Village Campground. We stayed at the latter one.

We drove through the territories and took it all in on the way to the Rio Grande Village Campground. It is located on, yes, you probably guessed it, the Rio Grande! How cool is that? As we passed by a sign that said “Hot Springs” Amy started getting so excited. Wait until later to see how that turned out!

We saw the camp store and gas pumps as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. The sight of the gas pumps was a relief to me. Just hoped the’d be open in the morning, and yes they were. We explored the camp store the next morning. It was shocking to find so many groceries and cool knickknacks in this smaller sized building. Attached to it was a laundry room and public restrooms. Neat place. Found everything we were looking for plus more.

There were other camper vans parked right beside our spot. We ended up meeting them. They were pretty cool. One lady was renting a van with her daughter to see if she wanted to actually go out and buy one. She came over and asked to look in our van. I said well excuse the mess. She didn’t mind, stepped on in and spoke to Amy for a few, nice lady.

That night it got dark. Before it did, we watched one of the most beautiful sunsets we had ever seen from our van.

The second night we spent in our sight was a bit different. We returned from an all day adventure in the park. We were heated and exhausted. We came back to make some dinner to find out the entire park lost electricity. I packed up and moved the van to two different spots, plugged in. Still no electricity. I had thought it was our site because the electric outlet wasn’t in the ground very good. It kind of swayed back and forth. Turns out the park was out. I didn’t find out until the camp host drove by and told me. Then I moved our van back to our original spot feeling a little funny that I had moved it around.

The electricity never came back on. I fired up our generator to run the air conditioning through the night. I used our Jet Boil to cook us up some delicious pasta. Open bag, in goes the hot water, seal the bag, wait ten minutes and then wah-la!

We ate and watched the sun melt into the horizon. The shades of orange cast by the sun surrounded us. We left the door open as long as we could until the world outside got dark. I didn’t want any bears coming the van, lol. The campground is surrounded by a huge lucious green field on two sides with trees so big and then we had the desert floor on our backside. The Rio Grande is pretty much dried up during our visit and the only water we end up seeing is on our third day in the park, after the storm, the river is flowing as we cross it making our way back out of the park.

We still feel this was one of the best campsites we experienced on our trip out west. Even with the storm and electricity being down a whole night it turned out to be a favorite we will not soon forget. The sunrises and sunsets were to die for. We met some cool neighbors that were van owners or renters and ate some yummy pasta. The sunset on our last night there I saw something up on hill. It appeared to be a person. I thought it might be Jesus watching down on us. I took the pictures to prove it. So breathtaking.

I believe you would need at minimum two full days to explore this park. Three or four full days would be best. I would maybe come in a different season than we did. Like I said, the river was dried up and the heat was crazy hot. Plus, the park is so spread out, so big, it takes time to get to different areas. I would also recommend you think about bringing or renting some type of 4x4, a Jeep, or something capable of going down gravel, rocky, dirt, and muddy roads. The Aloha did her job but as you will read soon enough in this journal, I had to turn her around to avoid getting her stuck in mud. I will speak of this experience shortly.

We filled the Aloha up with fuel and headed out of the campground. Amy wanted so badly to hike a trail called the Santa Elena Canyon Trail. We crossed a bridge with dry desert floor underneath. When the river flows it comes rushing down this line. Not this day, all dried up. Until like I said, the very last day when we were leaving there was actually water flowing. Not enough to think of it as a river, but enough to say hey, that’s the Rio Grande! We approached a tunnel on the road and I pulled us over into he parking lot. Amy loves tunnels if you didn’t know this already. She goes crazy on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountain Expressway. There was a trail running off this parking lot. I locked up the Aloha and we set out on the trail. it was just a short one leading to a view of Rio Grande Coastal Flood Plain. I could see as far as my eyes let me and knew the lands continued on to the Mexican border beyond my vision capabilities. So amazing. I know i’m probably using this word amazing a lot but it fits so well!

We drove through the tunnel. We drove through the tunnel. We drove through the tunnel. No I didn’t accidentally write the same thing three times. What I was driving at (get it driving at? ha) was that when we come to a tunnel in the road, any tunnel in the road mind you, and Amy is in the vehicle with me, then we go back and forth through this same tunnel until Amy gets her daily dose of tunnel adrenaline.

Then there was movement among the brush. I stopped, rolled the window down. “What? What do you see?” Amy asks.

“Right there. Over there.”

“Where? What is it? I don’t see it?”

“Its literally right beside the van on the side of the road.” She shrugs her shoulders at me. I point. Still doesn’t help her. The coyote blends right in to the scenery. He is so hard to see. But he is right there, oh so close. I honk the horn. I know, I know I probably shouldn’t have but I did. It jumps to its feet.

“OH!” she screams in my ear. She has unbuckled and is now practically sitting on my lap in the driver’s seat. She is leaning over me staring out the window in amazement (ha, different form of the word used here). The coyote kind of stumbles around. I guess we woke him up from a solid dream. He doesn’t run off right away either. No, instead he lingers around in a circle. Looks at us, then looks away as if to say, “tourists.” Finally, he does trot off at a slow speed but not before we get some cool pictures and video footage.

We made a pit stop at the Panther Junction Visitor Center and went inside. It was probably the only place in the entire park where we got decent cell reception. The center was set up nicely inside and had tons of information about the park, very informative! We got our maps and learned how to get to Santa Elena Canyon Trail. We were still at least a 30-40 minute drive away. We took in an awful lot of scenery along the way. The answer is YES. If in your mind you are asking, “Can someone just drive through the park and be amazed? YES. So AMAZING!

Amy let me pull off at a canyon stop on the way. I jumped out with my Sony AS73 and my tripod. We started down the trail. Mountainous views all around and a huge canyon below us. I avoided the cacti plants because well, they will sting you right? With those big old pointy things? Cool to look at, not cool to touch. Another lesson I learned from our trip to Utah and also in a trip to Hawaii. Stories for another time.

I snapped pictures and video and even tried filming myself walking out on a cliff overlooking the canyon. Just a kid with his toy! Snap, snap, snap. Man we were having a blast. All Amy could think about was getting on that Santa Elena Trail. Me too! Too bad it never happened.

We drove for some time with the windows down. We past so many different backdrops and scenes stopping here and there to take advantage of some great photo ops! One was at Goat Mountain where the backdrop was just too perfect to pass up. I told Amy, “Just a few paces more, nope, keep going, little further, little further! Even got a great shot of the Aloha with Goat Mountain in the background. Amy was driving this time and I was the guy turning every which way but loose in the front passenger chair snapping photos.

We arrived at Santa Elena Canyon. So excited and pumped up, ready to hike! We started passing all these wicked trees with no leaves. Some appeared they had been through heavy storms while others appeared they had undergone fire damage. The road had turned to dirt and gravel. We came upon a patch in the road flooded with mud and water. Amy stopped and said, “I’m going to let you drive this one.” We swapped chairs. I hesitated for a moment.

“Are you sure you want to try this?” The look on her face said she did. So I put the gear in drive and took off. We slid through the mud and it flew up everywhere on the Aloha. You could feel the tires sliding. The Aloha successfully made it through. I worried about the generator. Even though Thor had given us a recall where we had the backend jacked up three inches and a metal plate placed around the generator, I worried. I worried that it would get messed up, start dragging and we would get stuck. But the Aloha surprised us and made it through. We drove the road another quarter of a mile or so and I stopped again. In front of us was the biggest mud hole i’d seen.

No Way! I thought to myself. I was hoping Amy was feeling the same. It sucked that we couldn’t go any further but it wasn’t worth the risk to the van. Just then a man and woman pulled up in a truck next to us. He told us don’t bother going down the road any further, the road was completely washed out. He couldn’t even make it in his 4x4 truck. We thanked him and turned around carefully. We still had a mud bog to go back through. We stopped afterwards to take a look outside at the mud damage. The Aloha was caked in mud everywhere. Poor Aloha! LOL. Taught us some lessons about the van and this park. The Santa Elena Canyon Trail would have to wait. Amy still had two more hikes planned for us this day. Hopefully, they would turn out better. Do you think they did? Let’s find out shall we?

The Chisos Basin Trailhead is a 5.5 mile hike with an elevation of 900 feet. It takes the average person 2-3 hours to hike. It took Amy and I only five minutes! Just joking. The trail descends from the parking lot down into the Oak Creek Canyon. It has many panoramic views. No matter which direction you look in there is a view I promise you this! Amazing! It is a downhill hike.

You will feel the burn on the 900 feet elevation gain on the way back! Bring lots of water and make sure you hydrate. Sunscreen too, you will get burnt as we did taking the Hot Springs Trail (coming next, wait until you hear this one). At the end, the mountain splits and you walk through the “window” to get an incredible view.

They also have lodging at this area as well. We didn’t check this out very closely due to time constraints but it looked like a pretty cool place to stay if we ever make it back this far.

This area in the Chisos Mountains is where they said bears are often spotted and snakes too. There are 31 species of snakes in the park, four of which are rattlesnakes. So be careful. The ranger told me that just before we arrived there was a momma bear and her two cubs walking around the parking lot. Beautiful, magical place. Now on to our last adventure, The Hot Springs Trail. This is the trail that almost ended us.

The Hot Springs was just that, hot, but without the springs. We had a sinking feeling that since everything else (except the roadway leading to the Santa Elena Canyon Trail that is) was pretty much dried up the springs would be too. This was very true. We headed down a long winding dirt road with rocks. The Aloha rocked back and forth. I did as well in the passenger seat. The van handled it fine however, no worries. We got in pretty far and noticed a big sign that warned us no campers or RVs past this point. We switched seats and I attempted to drive past this sign, silly me. We went around a curve and then saw that the road twisted sharply to the right. I took the turn, silly me, and continued up the mountain until the road became so narrow, silly me, that we started to get a little spooked. Okay, you got me, a lot spooked. With Amy’s guidance I backed the van up to the main road, was able to do a 50 point turn, silly me, and get us going back to the area we saw the sign. At this location we found a big area off the road and parked. We grabbed some bottle waters, no pack this time, no extra food or water needed right? Silly us this time.

Amy said it’s only a mile and we should be fine. I love it when she says, “…we should be fine” because nine times out of ten well, were not. Just kidding. But this time, silly her.

I followed in her footsteps as she took to the gravel road like she was running a marathon, like she had practiced for this very trail her entire life. Now here she was and she was bound and determined to get a look (or possibly a soak?) in these hot springs. It was like 105 degrees out at this point. Amy wanted to get into a “Hot Springs” that was more than likely even hotter right? Silly her. Silly me. Silly us.

We walked that mile without shade. Watched a young man steer his Jeep through the road trail past us. Watched him go down, turn around, and come out on the other side with no issues. The road was just too narrow for me to attempt it with the Van. Good call! Amy was way up ahead of me towards the end of the trail hoping she could find her magical springs. I was wondering if anyone else was going to come out here and maybe give us a lift back. I taped some messages in case they found our burnt up bodies out here one day. Thankfully, I never had to send them out. LOL. She was hollering something at me from ahead. I caught up with her and immediately saw the sadness in her eyes, oh that disappointing look she gave. The gate to the springs up ahead was closed. No hot springs today. We turned back, drank all our waters, and somehow we arrived at our van. We got in. She demanded I turn the air conditioning up on high. Both our faces were burnt from the sun, bright red. I found it hard to breathe. We drank more fluids and that cracked in our voices eventually went away. We had packs with water bags, we had cool rags, we had lots of things we could have brought on the hike with us. We realized at that moment how lucky we were, and how silly we had been. Back at the campsite later on, no electricity, eating our Jet Boil pasta bowls, we laughed and joked about it.

Before you go let me share one more little short story with you. On our way out of Big Bend National Park things started changing. We could sense it. As we crossed over the bridge just past our campground we saw water flowing, the Rio Grande had come alive over night it seemed during the storm. We saw a deer run out across the road in front of us. We saw a coyote again, we saw rabbits, we saw birds. Animals were something we hadn’t seen a lot of during our time there. And as we came near the exit to the park I saw another deer. I was bound and determined to get a picture, proof animals exited in the park, lol, silly me.

It was only a two lane highway. One lane out. One lane in. Desert on both sides for miles and miles. I saw a deer. I wanted a picture. I made a u-turn, silly me. I don’t know if they had Boarder Patrol agents staked out in the desert plain in camouflage or if they maybe had cameras somewhere, or looking at us from a drone or satellite high above. One thing we know for sure is they saw me do that u-turn. They were coming to us. I never could find that deer either, sucks. I made another u-turn and headed back out. Two SUV vehicles with Boarder Patrol sticker on their sides came flying past us in the opposite direction. Amy and I both new that at any minute…

They made abrupt u-turns and came up from the rear on Aloha’s tail end. Up ahead, a checkpoint (unmanned when we first came into the park two days ago) now manned with an armed agent, arms crossed, dark shaded sunglasses on, staring us down. He pointed to his left, our right, signaling us to pull into the checkpoint. The chase cars were lining up, one behind us, one up on the driver’s side. I slowly rolled over two of the biggest speed bumps I have ever encountered and came to a halt next to the agent. I rolled my window down. I said hello. He was very friendly and greeted us back.

“Did you make a u-turn back there a little ways?” he asked. I tried not to laugh. Amy I think, did laugh, at me. Silly me.

“Yessir, that was me. I saw your partners coming after I turned back around.”

“May I ask why you made that u-turn?”

“I saw a deer. I wanted a picture.” Amy chuckled again. At me. After I said my excuse I didn’t know for sure if the agent would believe me. The words, the explanation suddenly sounded silly. Silly me.

“Ah. Okay. Just the two of you on board?”

“Yessir.”

“There is a lot of human smuggling going on out here. We just wanted to make sure, check you guys out.”

“Yessir. No smuggling here, you are welcome to come a board.”

“Not necessary, where you heading next?”

“Carlsbad Caverns.”

“You guys be safe and enjoy your trip.”

Silly me.

In closing I just want to go on record to say Big Bend National Park is wonderful. You need to visit. You need 3-4 days to visit it properly. It is so Amazing and so Beautiful. We didn’t have the best of luck at times for sure but we are very blessed and happy we got to see this magnificent desert park. We hope to return one day better prepared. Silly Us.