Family Vacation - Big Bend National Park (Part 1)

For the last several months we have been excited about Abe having a week off from work and we wanted to do something really fun. Since everyone says that you can't camp in Texas during the summer we decided to give it a try during the winter. Luckily the base has good rates on renting a camper for the week so we set out finding somewhere to camp. Being new to the area I just looked on the map of Texas and looked for a large expanse of green and ended up finding Big Bend National Park which is right on the border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River. As we put our plans into action we got a lot of feedback from people that thought we had made a good choice and had great things to say about it. Though people did mention it was really far away and in the middle of nowhere (and they were not exaggerating). We had our doubts that we would ever get there with all the stops for gas we had to make (gas mileage pulling a trailer is awful!) But in the end it was definitely worth it. Big Bend is popular for its varied landscape. Most of the park is desert but then in the middle there is the Chisos Mountains, where it was very green and beautiful. Then there are the areas around the Rio Grande River that are completely different too. For the three days we decided to visit each of the different areas. The park is huge so there was some serious driving between points in the park. I took so many pictures that I'm not going to be able to put them into one post so I thought I would break it up into two. But since I loaded these into blogger thinking I would do them all we are starting with the end of the trip and moving forward.

On Day 2 we headed to hike a canyon where the Rio Grande goes through the mountains. We were all surprised that the Rio Grande isn't quite as "grand" as we were expecting. It can be more than a foot or 2 deep in the middle.


These two kiddos can be so sweet when they are having fun together.

Ethan was obsessed with carrying a reed the whole hike and acting like it was a spear. He threatened several other families walking along the way (most of them played along with him).

Taylor was SO proud of herself when she got to the top of this rock. She is quite a climber, just like her brother. Climbing rocks was usually the highlight of our hikes.

Even I can get into a little rock climbing.

After we finished up hiking through the canyon we took a walk in search of natural hot springs along the river. I never thought that it would be as warm enough to even think about bringing bathing suits but the kids were pretty upset that they couldn't get into the warm water. I couldn't get over the fact that some 60 year old man was in the water in a speedo (or maybe his underwear). It was very disturbing.

On Day 3 we headed to some rocks through the desert. We enjoyed a lot more rock climbing.

Here we are, almost to the top of the rocks. Behind us is the path we had taken on our hike.

Ethan at the top of the hike, holding the balanced rock.

Taylor was giving me a heart attack as she tried to follow her brother up the rocks. The drop off on the other side was my concern.

Our second hike of the day was again along the Rio Grande River. I will admit that after reading the warnings on the brochures at the park about how there were routes of drug smuggling and human trafficking through the park I was a little hesistant every time we saw Mexicans on the US side of the border. But we didn't have any interesting stories to tell.

At the end of the hike along the river was a huge sand pile. We did venture up the largest pile but the pile we let the kids play in was at least 3 stories high. It was the kids dream come true, lots of sand and no one telling them to stay clean.

We were finding sand in every crack and crevis in these children for several days. In this picture you can see Ethan at the top of the picture as he made it up the pile. We wore them out GOOD this day.

This picture was from a overlook near our campsite. On the right is our campsite through the trees and on the left is the Rio Grande. In the very back were the Chisos mountains.