Big Bend Made Easy
The best sights, where to stay, what to eat, how to find a guide, and everything else you could possibly want to know about the most beautiful place in Texas.
(Page 2 of 4)
Boquillas Canyon. The initial part of the hike from the parking lot—over a bare, rocky hill and down to the river, then through a cutbank path—is unremarkable. But once inside the canyon, the trail rewards hikers with magnificent views that make one dizzy from neck craning. When it comes to the play of light on rocks, especially in the afternoon, nothing in the park beats the Boquillas palisades. Extra bonus: the massive windblown dune inside the canyon that is perfect for sand surfing. Allow two hours.
Grapevine Hills. A six-mile drive down an improved dirt road suitable for ordinary cars brings you to a dry canyon on the desert floor. After a one-mile hike through a valley of rock-strewn rubble, the trail ends with a short, steep scramble to a scene that appears to have been created by an infant Godzilla: a huge boulder precariously teetering atop two smaller slabs, one of the great photo opportunities in the park. Roadrunners often share the trail. Allow one and one half hours.
Dagger Flat. One of the unknown delights of Big Bend is this self-guided auto tour on a well-graded dirt road. It offers the most extensive introduction to the desert plant community seen through a windshield. Stop at the beginning of the road in the northeastern part of the park and get a guidebook for 50 cents. The seven-mile road ends at a loop in the middle of a bizarre thicket of giant dagger yucca, some more than ten feet tall, which should be at peak bloom in late March. Although the loop area is identified as Dagger Flat, the actual flat is at least a quarter mile away, according to topographical maps. Allow about an hour, two hours if you plan to walk.
Dugout Wells. Just off the main paved road to Rio Grande Village is another underrated destination that is a quickie introduction to the desert on foot. Hardwood trees, a windmill, and abundant wildlife that show up to drink from a spring around sunrise and sunset suggest an oasis. The adjacent Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail, a half-mile walk with interpretive signs identifying and describing representative desert plant life, underscores the harsh reality surrounding the spring. Allow 45 minutes.
The Window. A twenty-foot opening between solid rock polished slick by water erosion, the Window is where all the rain and snowmelt in the Chisos Basin drains out. Although the rock is too steep and slick for anyone to risk peeking over the edge, you can see the desert below through a narrow rock formation appropriately called the Gunsight. But you don’t need to get up close to the Window to appreciate it as a natural stage for sunsets in the basin. One of the best perspectives is from the bench at the end of Window View Trail, three tenths of a mile from the convenience store. The Window Trail, a two- to two-and-one-half-mile hike (depending upon where you start) to the actual Window opening, follows a tree-shaded drainage and a running creek to the pouroff. Allow two and one half to three and one half hours for the hike and remember that the walk back is uphill.
The Lost Mine Trail. Though a steeper grade than the Window Trail, this is the least strenuous hike in the high Chisos. The trail follows a series of shaded switchbacks to several breathtaking views of the basin below and Casa Grande above. Its popularity is evidenced by the recently expanded parking area, where guide booklets are available for 25 cents. Deer, kangaroo rats, mountain bluebirds, giant ravens, and even peregrine falcons circling in the sky are easily spotted from the trail; sightings of black bear, which have recently returned to the park, have been reported here. In March, this is also a prime location for observing migrating hummingbirds. The short trail to the Juniper Canyon overlook is about two hours round trip; the whole trip takes about four hours.
The South Rim. The view from the top of the Chisos is the grandest in the park and perhaps in all of Texas; unfortunately, it is also one of the hardest to reach, requiring either an all-day horseback ride or an arduous twelve- to fifteen-mile hike, depending on which route you take. The reward at the precipice is a series of incredible vistas that are some of the most expansive on the North American continent, extending more than 200 miles on a clear day. From here, the eye can effortlessly follow the river on its entire 107-mile, three-canyon bend through the park. The Laguna Meadow Trail is the more gradual route up, although it is one and one half miles longer than the treacherously steep Pinnacles Trail, which is best negotiated on the way down. Either way, seeing Big Bend from its figurative rooftop is worth the effort. Plan to pass through Boot Springs for a respite by a placid brook. This quiet refuge is a feeding station for Colmia warblers, which are rarely seen in the U.S.
Where to Stay (Indoors): A big issue on almost every Big Bend trip is whether to stay inside or outside the park. The sole choice inside the park is the Chisos Mountains Lodge at the basin (477-2291). Its central location is certainly more convenient to most park activities, but if you feel the need for a telephone, a choice of restaurants, and such valuable amusements for kids as in-room TV and an on-site swimming pool, stay outside the park. The lodge has 72 rooms ($65 for a double) that are somewhere between a Motel 6 and a Holiday Inn but in a much prettier location. A cluster of six rustic cottages is tucked in the pines several hundred yards from the motel units ($69 for two). Demand is so heavy that booking cottages a year in advance is a must. Hope you get number 103, which has the choice back-porch view of the Window. Though the lodge is already booked for most of spring break and Easter weekend this year, you can call to check on last-minute cancellations and no-shows.
There are motels to the west of the park in Study Butte (24 miles from Panther Junction) and Lajitas (41 miles) and to the north in Marathon (69 miles). In Study Butte (pronounced “Stewdy Byoot”), a haphazard settlement two miles from the western park entrance, at the intersection of Texas Highway 118 and Farm-to-Market Road 170, are the Big Bend Motor Inn and the companion Mission Lodge across the highway (371-2218; 800-848-2363), two plain but clean motels with a gift shop, a pool, and a combination gas station, convenience store, and cafe. The TVs are hooked up to a satellite and, true to Big Bend’s nonconformist bent, carry channels from New York City and Raleigh, North Carolina. A standard double is $63 a night. Less than a mile west is Easter Egg Valley (371-2430), a.k.a. the Chisos Mining Company Motel, whose pleasantly decorated rooms are housed in a string of connected prefab buildings. A double is $48 a night. The motel at the Terlingua Ranch (371-2416), about 30 miles north and east of the Study Butte intersection, has a restaurant, a pool, and modern rooms that start at $33 for a double. The secluded Longhorn Ranch Motel (371-2541), 12 miles north of the Study Butte intersection, has 24 homey, tastefully appointed units laid out like a cavalry outpost. It has TVs, a swimming pool, and a restaurant but no in-room phones. A double is $50.
The erstwhile resort town of Lajitas has the widest array of lodging choices west of the park—81 motel rooms, a bunkhouse, cabins, and condos, most furnished with antiques and equipped with a telephone and satellite TV, along with access to a pool (central reservations 424-3471). Doubles are $65 a night; a two-bedroom condo that sleeps up to six runs from $148 a night to $740 a week. Lajitas is dubbed “the Palm Springs of Texas” by its boosters and “Wally World” by its detractors, the latter in honor of Houston developer Walter Mischer, who dreamed up this ersatz Dodge City twenty years ago. Complementing the lodging are convention facilities, a bar and restaurant, a nine-hole golf course, an airstrip, stables, tennis courts, mountain bike rentals, and the Barton Warnock Environmental Education Center desert museum and gardens. The covered faux Western town boardwalk is Lajitas’ commercial center, with a drugstore and soda fountain, a liquor store, the offices of Big Bend River Tours, an art gallery, a gift shop, and the Badlands Hotel, the check-in desk for all Lajitas lodging.
Where to Stay (Outdoors): Big Bend has three campgrounds in the park—the Chisos Basin, with 63 sites; Cottonwood, 35 miles from Panther Junction, near the historic Castolon store in the western part of the park, with 35 sites shaded by a huge grove of cottonwood trees; and Rio Grande Village, 20 miles from Panther Junction, on the east side of the park, with 100 sites and an overflow campground, as well as a smaller trailer park with hookups ($12.50 a night), a store (one of the two places in the park that sell beer), a gas station, a self-service laundry, and the park’s only public showers (75 cents for 5 minutes).
Permits for the fifty designated primitive backcountry campsites in the Chisos Mountains are presently obtained at Panther Junction until the remodeling of the ranger station in the basin is finished. Primitive campsites elsewhere are divided into zones, to which hikers are assigned when they obtain their backcountry permits at Panther Junction. During spring break, primitive sites close to roads—Croton Springs, Grapevine Hills, and Nugent Mountain—fill up quickest, followed by sites along popular backpacking trails such as the Chimneys, Mule Ears, and Dodson Ranch routes, even though they are long walks from the nearest road. During busy periods, the only openings may be the primitive campsites near Mariscal Canyon and Talley, down by the Rio Grande in the park’s southern extreme, reached only by four-wheel drive vehicles on the extremely rough River Road, or sites around Dagger Flat and Persimmon Gap in the north. Backcountry campers must be at least a half mile from any road, a quarter mile from any spring or historic site, and one hundred yards from any trail, and must possess a backcountry permit.
My Library
