We've always talked about taking a trip to Big Bend but never got "around" to it. Maybe because it's 8 hours away even though it's here in Texas? Well, friends of ours LOVE Big Bend area so we decided to take a combined family vacation our there with the Hagens. Josiah had spent a lot of time out there, so was literally our tour guide, which made my job so much easier. He did all the itinerary work, figured out where we'd stay when, and what we would do/see. All I had to do was show up. We drove out to Big Bend on a cold day- it had been in the 30's overnight and we expected pretty chilly temps on our first night camping out. However as we drove into the park it also started to rain... and we decided camping out wasn't such a great idea. So we called the Chisos Mountain Lodge and they had room! We headed there for the night and made "taco soup" in our motel room before we all crashed from a long day of travel.
The next day was warmer (40's, still chilly) but the big boys went on a bike ride while Lauren and I took the kids (big and small) to see some dinosaur fossils and eat lunch. We eventually made it to our "meet up spot" at Ernst Tinaja and the dads literally pulled in 5 minutes after our arrival! We took a beautiful walk to see the tinaja (waterhole). Dinner was back at the lodge, delicious!
The next day was still cool and very foggy so we decided to skip the "view" hikes and instead headed to the Santa Elena Canyon. Beautiful walk and scenery. We packed up and moved to the small town of Terlingua in an old rustic home just outside the Big Bend National Park. We enjoyed a day of sight seeing and hiking-then dinner at the famous Starlight Theater where Nathan ate a whole DIEGO burger (1 lb of meat, 3 eggs, bacon, etc) it was HUGE. Josiah said he couldn't even finish one!
After Terlingua we took a road trip to the Big Bend State Park (quite a drive, we stopped at Closed Canyon on the way where we saw some mountain lion tracks!) and then over 20 miles on a dirt road to our primitive camping spot. Not another person in sight, other than our party of 8. We set up tents and Josiah cooked us a wonderful camp dinner. Day came and we headed our on yet another hike.By afternoon, the little ones (Bear and Veda) were tired so mom and dad took them back to camp for some quiet time while Tones and I took the big kids to Cinco Tinajas Trail (the 5 pools) and saw more beautiful scenery. It was our last day hiking around and we were sad to head back, but Josiah was working on salmon and steaks for dinner, so we couldn't miss that.
We headed out the next day-- quick breakfast and packed up, with a long day's drive ahead of us. Dirty and tired, but we had a really amazing time!
