Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park is pretty far from Tucson so we stopped in El Paso for the night. It mostly consisted of stuffing ourselves with chicken mole and marveling at the proximity of Mexico. By the time we finally got to Big Bend, the campsites in the park were already taken. Apparently Thanksgiving is their busiest time of the year. So we turned around and stayed at a private campground about 10 miles outside the park.

Driving into the campground a dog stopped our car in the middle of the deserted dirt road. Andy tried to find the dog’s owner but the dog immediately ran away into the brush, figures. Andy was lost for about an hour in the campground – it’s a lot bigger than it looked on the map. Great start!

One night we climbed up a hill by the campsite. You can see our campsite down below, and the next closest site. This place is just huge.

Inside the National Park, we visited the Rio Grande via the Santa Elena Canyon Trail. We’ve never been on a trail this busy, it was like waiting in an amusement park line! Still beautiful though! We also loved Big Bend’s new archeology display, it’s full of engaging graphics and fossils.

Easily our favorite part of Big Bend was the South Rim trail. It’s an all day hike and it allowed us to get beyond some of the crowds. It has pretty varied terrain and amazing views from the rim. We prefer to get the hard part over with first, so we ascended the steep Pinnacles trail and descended through gradual meadows.

Our original plan was to make Thanksgiving dinner in the park at a picnic table, but they were all taken. So we headed back out to the campground and had a delicious dinner of stuffing, chicken (close enough to turkey), broccoli, sweet potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce (thanks to Whole Food’s hot bar). Afterwards, Andy made a game with rocks that we managed to play for a surprisingly long time. Probably sounds familiar to anyone that’s been subjected to Andy’s made-up games before.

Highlights of Big Bend National Park

• South Rim Hike
• Fossil Discovery Exhibit – perfect for adult sized kids like us (and probably normal kids too, who knows)
• Having fun at the campsite. We spent more time than usual hanging out at our campsite due to all the crowds during Thanksgiving

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