…is Big Bend. That really wasn’t a tough decision, as neither of us are fans of the high temperatures, lack of the fall season, and the (mostly) unchanging landscape. No, we really do like living down here, but we definitely miss living in Fayetteville at this time of year when the leaves are actually changing colors and the temperatures get significantly cooler. Anyway, it was fun to make the nine-hour drive down to Big Bend National Park and see some really awesome scenery. We basically had a five-day weekend, so we spent two days driving there and back, and three full days exploring the park. Big Bend is basically in the middle of nowhere. Once we got off interstate, we still had a good three hours of driving and we only passed through three very small towns.
Here’s some pics of the last town we drove through (still an hour or so from the park entrance). The name of the town was Marathon, and in the background you can see the banner for the “Marathon Marathon”. We wanted to eat dinner in this town, but unfortunately not a single place was open. It was a pretty desolate town, though, so I guess you can’t expect much.
Our first day we hiked two trails, about ten miles in all. The first one took us to the summit of a mountain and we saw some gorgeous views.
The second trail we went on was mainly through the desert (much hotter temperatures than the first one) and it took us to a place called the “window”, a narrow cut of rock that overlooked the valley and mountains below.
We had to cross a lot of water on this trail:

On Sunday, we took a scenic drive down to the Rio Grande. We got to look across the river into Mexico, and we even saw one man crossing back into Mexico on his canoe. It appeared that he had just dropped off a bunch of goods for sale (decorated walking sticks, bracelets, etc.) on the US side. He had written notes on pieces of cardboard, asking for donations for himself and his local school.
On our last day, we did some “off-roading” (it obviously wasn’t too adventurous if our small car is still running) to get to a hiking trail with some neat rock formations at the end of it.
Here are some shots of our campsite. It was the only campground open in the park because of recent flooding. Had we been given a choice, I think I still would have chosen this one because we were surrounded by mountains…and one of my new favorite animals, the javelina. Groups of these would come through our campground every afternoon to eat the grass.






































































