Big Bend National Park

Our first real stop of the 2018 adventure was in Terlingua, which is the nearest town to Big Bend NP. I will start off by saying west Texas is rough. Flat, dry and windy are the better adjectives. The town of Terlingua has 58 residents, yes, 58. We spent 4 days here exploring Big Bend, which has its own beauty below the dry and windy and landscapes. We went to the Santa Elena canyons to see the Rio Grande, which is not very grande any more. The canyon is cool and we enjoyed the short hike into the canyon along the river bank. I threw a rock into Mexico. Our second day was spent doing the big hike in the park to the top of Emory Peak. The hike was fantastic with the mix of desert and high mountain forest and the views at the top were ridiculous. I am still in trouble for the scrambling required to get to the very top of the peak. Our last day was sightseeing in other areas of the park that were more of the same. The highlight of the trip was our last night where we drove a few miles of the road into the desert for some Milky Way star gazing. Big Bend is the darkest and largest dark area of the US. The view of the stars was truly breathtaking. We waited an extra hour to break our dark camp because the views were so incredible. I would highly recommend finding a dark spot somewhere and spending 30 minutes enjoying a bottle of wine while your night vision opens up to the point that you can finally see the Milky Way. I doubt we will visit the area again for anything other than the star gazing, but I am glad we crossed it off the NP list. Fun fact about Big Bend is that the park was officially established on D-Day. Fun fact about Terlingua is that it is an old mercury mining town. They pulled over 100K vials of mercury from the mines before being shut down in the 40's.