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Abig 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.
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 $64.95 a night. Less than a mile west is Easter Egg Valley (432-371-2254), 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 $38 for a double.
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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 $70 a night; a two bedroom condo that sleeps up to six runs from $168.95 a night to $833 a week. Lajitas is dubbed "the Palm Springs of Texas" by its boosters and "Walley World" by its detractors, the later 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.
