Big Bend National Park: Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive & Santa Elena Canyon – 1/15/22
Well, Big Bend National Park is BIG. When you have only three full days to explore 801,200 acres, just go with the guidebooks and top 10 lists and pinkie swear you’ll return someday.
Back story: A visit to our daughter, Laura, and her fiancé, Zach, in San Antonio morphed into a road trip to Big Bend NP (first time for all of us). I was a bit late in looking for accommodations and we ended up with an Airbnb in Alpine, TX – a looooong drive in and out of the park each day. [Note: if you’re going, plan way ahead and if you don’t like the options inside the Park, shoot for the quirky town of Terlingua.]
We broke up the all-day drive from San Antonio to Alpine with a side trip to the Jersey Lilly Saloon in Langtry (Judge Roy Bean’s saloon/courtroom).
At Alpine, we tossed our luggage and groceries into our Airbnb and hustled another half hour to Marfa, a small community with a big reputation as a quirky, artsy, foodie culture town. All I know is we found Marfa Spirit Co, which specializes in sotol (a unique liquor similar to tequila or mescal but distilled from the Dasylirion wheeleri plant). I am not sure what happened after that.
So…this morning we were up very early headed to Big Bend. Zach was uber prepared with coolers, a picnic basket, Google maps and the day’s itinerary. [I brought along a hiking guidebook, Falcon Guides Hiking Big Bend National Park by Laurence Parent.] With Zach as our driver, I relaxed in the back seat and enjoyed the ride.
As the sun rose, the overwhelming magnitude of wide-open spaces began to sink in. The temperature was 31 degrees and the wind was fierce, as in “be careful opening car doors!”
We entered the park through Maverick Junction (thank you, NPS, for my senior lifetime pass). At the Castolon/Santa Elena Junction, we turned right onto Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive for our leisurely 30-mile drive to the Rio Grande. Stops along the way:
Stop #1: A half-mile walk to the site of Sam Nail Ranch
In the first five minutes on the trail, Jim stumbled with arms windmilling like a cartoon character and almost fell face first into a large bed of cactus. Big spines penetrated his pants and embedded in in his legs, which he said were pretty darn painful. It was a scary moment because he could have been seriously injured. I think Laura was spooked…old parents, can’t take them anywhere…
Stop #2: Sotol Vista, a high lookout point with expansive views south and west to the Chisos Mountains and the Santa Elena Canyon cut in the mesa. The cold wind gusts increased and I was very glad I’d brought my puffy jacket. [Will these conditions continue all day?]
Stop #3: Homer Wilson Ranch site, a sheep and goat ranch (also known as the Blue Creek Ranch) in Blue Creek Valley. In total, Homer Wilson’s holdings included 45,000 acres in what is now Big Bend NP. Wilson died in 1943, his family moved away, and by 1945 the ranch sat abandoned.
The house that still stands at Blue Creek Ranch was occupied by the ranch foreman. It’s a half-mile walk down and across scenic bottom land, lush with cactus and other flowering plants.
Our chilly crewAs we neared the house, I noticed a pricking sensation in my left calf. My pants leg had somehow brushed up against a cactus and dozens of small needles penetrated through to my socks, and ultimately about a dozen went all the way through to imbed in my leg – painful! I had to zip off the pant leg to get at everything and kept finding spines here and there for the rest of the day. After that, we were hyper-sensitive to being stalked by cacti.
floor of large stones from Blue Creek Canyon
Stop #4: Mule Ears Overlook is a half-mile mile spur road off of Ross Maxwell Drive and Mule Ears Trail begins at the parking area. The Mule Ears Peaks are very distinctive eroded rhyolite dikes that can be spotted from many points in the Park. Because of our limited time, we walked only about a quarter mile for a closer look and called it good.
Zooming in from far, far away
Stop #5: Castolon Visitor Center, featuring some well-preserved human history of Santa Elena Canyon when it was a cotton growing community of both U.S. and Mexican citizens. There are interpretive exhibits and several buildings to poke around in (although a 2019 fire did extensive damage to some).
[If you are going, check first, as Castolon is very remote and open only seasonally.]
Stop #6: Santa Elena Canyon Overlook, a stunning view of the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon carved by the Rio Grande River. The northern side of the canyon (on the right in the photo) is the United States border while the southern (left) side is the Mexico border at Parque Nacional Canon de Santa Elena. We stopped for a quick picnic lunch before driving on to the Canyon hike trailhead.
Stop #7: Santa Elena Canyon Trail – The hike is a popular, easy 1.7 miles round trip beginning with a quarter-mile walk through vegetation we don’t see in North Carolina (mesquite, tamarisk, giant river cane).
We popped out on the sandy edge of Terlingua Creek...wait a minute! Even reading the trail description ahead of time, I didn’t quite picture that we would first cross a branch of Terlingua Creek and then cross the wider confluence point where Terlingua Creek flows into the Rio Grande.
Zach removed his shoes and crossed barefoot, but the rest of us kept hiking shoes/boots on as we waded through the frigid water. What a memorable moment, putting my feet in the Rio Grande!
Chihuahuan desert while the steep canyon walls create deep shadow
The trail continues on a shelf along the right-hand side of the river, taking us a half-mile around the bend and up the canyon. I saw kayakers paddling towards us, and I promised myself I would return someday to do an overnight float trip.
3:30 pm but the shadows of the steep canyon walls make it look later.
Stop #8: Drove allllll the way back through the park to Terlingua, a one-of-a-kind town with many one-of-a-kind things to do, including dinner at the Starlight Theatre. [More exploration on another day.]
No reservations, just line up at 5:00 pm when they open the doors (we arrived at 4:30 pm). While we waited, we enjoyed adult beverages and started a conversation with three women sitting near the entrance, two sisters from Dallas and a friend from England. We swapped stories and big laughs (everything is bigger in Texas, remember?)
Before we knew it, we were seated and ordering antelope burgers – a great way to end a tremendous day in Big Bend National Park! (Oops, we still have a two-hour drive back to our place in Alpine…)
"At some point in life,
the world's beauty becomes enough."
~Toni Morrison
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