After our stay in a Roosevelt Stone Cottage in Big Bend National Park, the next stop on our week-long roadtrip was Marfa, Texas. We’d originally planned to take US385 north to Marathon. US385 parallels state highway 118 that we’d taken south from Alpine to the park. US385 had the advantage of taking us a longer and different route through Big Bend National Park to exit. The time to drive to Marfa on either highway would be about the same. That original route plan changed when I spotted a longer route that ran along the border and the Rio Grande. When I asked some of the staff at Chisos Mountains Lodge about that road, I was told it was called The River Road and not to miss it if we had the time. It would take us an extra 20 miles and an extra 45-50 minutes. We had the time, and we had a new route to Marfa.
We chose the longer, southern, route to Marfa so we could drive The River Road along the Texas/Mexico border.
The only minor downside of this route, from our point of view, was that we retraced our path back out the same way we’d come into Big Bend National Park and back through Terlingua. Oh well, after that, we’d be in new-to-us territory.
From Lajitas to Presidio (just across the border from Ojinaga, Mexico, in the map above), The River Road runs along the Rio Grande for over 50 miles. The bluffs of the Mexican Parque Nacional Cañon de Santa Elena loomed beyond the river valley to our left while the desert hills of Big Bend Ranch State Park spread out to our right. It’s ruggedly beautiful, mostly empty, country in between the few small towns. (I love the heading on the Big Bend Ranch State Park web site: “Welcome to the Other side of Nowhere!”) The River Road is in excellent shape and snakes through the landscape, rolling, dipping and rising like a roller coaster path. David loved driving it, and it was fun being a passenger, too.
A brisk wind, the aftermath of a cool front that had blown in the night before, buffeted us when we stopped to admire the scenery and take photos.
We scanned a posted map at the (west) terminus to the Rancherias Loop Trail trailhead in Big Bend Ranch State Park, smiling at the helpful note a hiker had left giving the date and location of a nearby running spring. (This point is strictly a hiking terminus and hikers must enter at the east end of the trail, pay and entrance fee and get oriented. The hike has dangers ranging from dehydration to mountain lions, rattlesnakes and bears and should be taken seriously.)
As the topography leveled out near Presidio, we saw small homes and farms on both sides of the border. We headed north towards Marfa at Presidio, not seeing much to slow us down in the flat border town. Not far north of Presidio, I spotted a herd of pronghorn, native “antelope,” just across a roadside fence. We turned around to watch them until they trotted over a rise. All in all, we were very happy with our choice to take the road less traveled.
Pronghorn on the side of the road north of Presidio, Texas
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Practical info:
There’s nowhere to get gasoline (or anything else) between Lajitas and Presidio, so bear that in mind. There is also no cell phone or internet service for most of the drive. We did pick up service from a tower on the Mexico side of the border as we neared Presidio. There’s a pull-out along the way with a few picnic tables under separate faux teepees to provide shade and a little shelter from wind.
View of Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande from the Santa Elena Canyon Trail
The goal and ultimate destination of our week-long Texas roadtrip was Big Bend National Park, one of the most remote national parks in the country. I’d heard about it all my life, but had a mental block about the distance. My loss! The park is remote…and desolate and harsh and ruggedly beautiful and vast beyond description.
My plans hadn’t included a government shutdown, and I was glad I’d booked one of the Roosevelt-era cottages in in the park’s Chisos Mountains Lodge over a year in advance since the Lodge is run by a private concessionaire and was open despite the unoccupied booth at the entrance to the park and the sign notifying visitors that park campgrounds were closed and staff was furloughed. I was happy to find the cottage all I’d hoped for, and we quickly settled in on our first afternoon, eager to get outside as soon as possible. We started with Chisos Basin Loop Trail, one of the seven hiking trails that start beside the cottages. The trail as far as we explored was well-worn and easy to follow. It had been groomed with logs and stones inset to ease the way on slopes. The view from the trailhead itself was hard to beat with the well-known “Window” at the end of the basin framing the span of desert, mountains and mesas beyond.
Trailhead near the Roosevelt Stone Cottages of Chisos Mountains Lodge
Big Bend National Park is a designated an “International Dark Sky” park and has the least light pollution of any national park in the lower forty-eight. We were especially excited about the nighttime potential of the park as a full lunar eclipse was going to happen our first night there and the weather was ideally clear. I’d brought an old Celestron “comet catcher” telescope and we set it up on our front porch to watch the event. The moon rose just beside the spectacular “Casa Grande” rock formation (looking something like a smaller relative of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower) that looms over the lodge complex. Our view of the eclipse was perfect. As the brilliant light of the moon was slowly shrouded, leaving only a dull orange orb suspended above, out popped the Milky Way and a seemingly infinite sea of stars, looking like pinholes in the blackness above. As I gazed across the valley at the stunning sight, a shooting star swept across the sky. What a show!
Big Bend National Park covers 801,163 acres so we headed out by car to reach my first must-see, Santa Elena Canyon, some 40 minutes or so from the Lodge. The main roads through the park are excellent, well-maintained, and monitored by rangers for speeding and other potential issues. We saw rangers on the roads even though the park was technically unstaffed due to the government shutdown. Santa Elena Canyon slices a passage through an otherwise uninterrupted wall of stone that stretches as far as the eye can see. The Rio Grande River flows down the canyon to flatten out and take a nearly 90 degree turn at that point to flow along the massive cliff wall. We watched a couple with a canoe put in at this point, then we waded across the shallow span of a small tributary to reach the Santa Elena Trail that runs along one wall of the canyon.
The Rio Grande River with Santa Elena Canyon visible in the distance forming a passage in the long wall of cliffs
The Santa Elena Trail begins with stone steps going up several stories. Once at the top, the trail is easy and only moderately sloped, easing down to the water’s edge and back up. The vegetation is interesting, changing from the cactus and scrub of the harsh upper levels to rushes and bamboo down below. The temperature changed constantly, too: cool in shadows and near the water, warm in the sun up higher…unless a cool breeze arrived to change things again. The views back across the park (see lead photo above) from the high points of the trail and of the canyon are awe-inspiring and not to be missed.
Santa Elena Canyon (For perspective, check out the couple in the canoe.)
After hiking the canyon, we spent the afternoon exploring places along the road back towards our Chisos Mountains Lodge cottage “home.” It was fun to stop at random trailheads and archaeological sites. Our first stop took us on a hike through scrub trees along a path dotted with spoor. Clearly this trail was popular with the local wildlife. We saw cat prints, probably those of a bobcat and not of one of the rare mountain lions, a majestic and potentially dangerous animal that — along with local bears — I’d love to see from a distance only. We had fun doing our outdoorsman bit, trying to identify the telltale leavings of the native fauna. My guess is that we were seeing the leavings of bobcat, fox and possibly ringtails. (In the canyon, it had been mainly deer and rabbits.) The ruins we explored were those of early ranchers Messers Sublett and Dorgan, partners who built their homes on adjacent hills with sweeping views of the mountains and canyons.
The ruins of the Dorgan home
We stopped off at Castalon, built 1919-1920 as a never-fully-outfitted army outpost during the Mexican Revolution. It later became a trading base operated by a local ranching family from 1919-1961. Now, it serves as a park office and hosts a display of old cotton-ginning machinery as well as a store offering refreshments and souvenirs.
Castolon buildings with Cerro Castellan in the distance
All along the roadways of Big Bend National Park, we found trailheads, historical, geological and botanical signs bringing context to the world around us. There are periodic picnic tables and toilet facilities, all that we saw were in excellent condition. We found ourselves stopping constantly to take pictures and explore. Although we saw signs of animals, we saw very little ground life. We did see a fair number of birds, though, both raptors and songbirds. We were surprised, at the end of the day, to realize we had logged 105 miles on the car between our hikes and wanderings.
It’s a dry, rugged part of the world.
Although it was January, we wore short sleeves one day and wished we had shorts. Other days we needed jackets. Since the climate is so dry, it’s important to take plenty of water whatever the temperature. And, even if it does warm up during the day, temperatures can drop dramatically at night (and can vary substantially during the day as you pass from sun to shade) so layers are important. Good footwear is also important as is watching your step. The plants are often covered in serious thorns, the rocks are sharp and this is rattlesnake country if ever I saw it.
The park also offers hot springs and a myriad of other vistas and trails. The border crossing at Boquillas was closed due to political turmoil in the U.S., but is usually open; just bring a passport. It’s a small crossing point, so rowboats and burros are the order of the day.
Big Bend National Park is a state and national treasure: unique, remote, wild and harshly beautiful. I’m so glad to have finally experienced it.
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Practical info:
Entry fees to Big Bend National Park are $30/vehicle, $25/motorcycle and $55 for an annual pass. We paid no entry fee since, due to the government shutdown, there was no one to pay. I’m not sure if entry would be included with the cost of lodging, but I doubt it.
See my previous post regarding lodging. I’m very happy we booked one of the Roosevelt Stone Cottages at Chisos Mountains Lodge as they seemed to me to be far beyond anything else available at the lodge. We booked just over a year in advance, which is a necessity. We paid $163/night plus tax. Pets are allowed in cottages 101, 102 and 103 with a $50 fee, although they are not allowed on trails.
Heading to Big Bend National Park from Davis Mountains State Park, we made sure to make time for a stop-off in Terlingua, a former mining town known primarily for its eponymous chili cook-off (actually two cook-offs these days which take place on the first weekend in November). I’d heard about the Terlingua chili cook-off for decades and am the proud owner of a cookbook of championship recipes from the original event. The chili cook-offs draw upwards of 10,000 people to a tent- and camper-filled party in the desert. According to the town’s event calendar, Terlingua has also instituted a couple of lesser cook-offs including one for black-eyed peas and another for dutch ovens. Barring cook-offs, Terlingua is a desolate little town. I didn’t expect much, and a cook-off-less Terlingua turned out to be less than that. Oh well, all travel destinations are not created equal. If you’ve got the time, the turnoff to the Terlingua “Ghost Town” is about 5 miles west of Hwy 118 just north of a main entrance to Big Bend National Park. If you don’t have the time, no worries.
Terlingua has developed a sort of funky, artsy reputation, but it is mostly a motley collection of ramshackle buildings; an old cemetery full of broken crosses and beer bottles; mobile homes, cheesy teepees, and the like serving as tourist accommodations; and a few small businesses and eateries scattered across a rocky desert.
We made a quick swing through the one main store (not remotely tempted to buy souvenirs), peeked in the ramshackle old jail and walked across the parking lot to view ruins of early settler buildings that constitute the “ghost town,” all of which took 20 minutes or so. The Starlight Theater, a well-known spot recommended to us was closed at lunch time, so we headed to nearby guesthouse La Posada Milagro for lunch. We ate outside on their porch, enjoying the view of the mountains of Big Bend in the distance despite the unsightly clutter of Terlingua. My chicken quesadilla was actually very good and my husband liked his big chicken salad sandwich, too. The service was friendly and we were welcome to provide our own beer.
Post lunch, we made a short trip through the dirt roads of the town towards AirBnB teepees in search of clear inflatable domes that serve as rental rooms offering views of the starry skies abounding in this remote part of the world. (My cousin had sent me an article about these new additions to Terlingua, and we were mildly curious.) We found the turn-off to the domes which sit just over a small rise from the teepees with a sign asking us to go no further if we weren’t guests. Oh well, the search was nothing but a lark anyway.
Terlingua Cemetery
Our last stop in Terlingua was the cemetery, as ramshackle as the rest of the town, but interesting nonetheless. Most graves are marked by rough board crosses although some are more elaborate and the cemetery is still in use. Typical Mexican skeleton-themed candles and trinkets decorated many graves along with flowers, beads, beer bottles and other mementoes.
All in all, I’m glad we stopped off in Terlingua just so I could see it for myself since it was such a short detour on our way to Big Bend National Park, but I can’t think of a reason to go back.
The elegant lobby of Hotel Settles in Big Spring, Texas
I’m super excited about our upcoming week-long Texas roadtrip. As a native Texan with roots going back to the days when Texas was an independent republic, it’s high time I got myself to one of the state’s most iconic, unique and remote treasures, Big Bend National Park. I reserved one of the park’s coveted Chisos Mountains Lodge cottages a year ago and crossed my fingers that the weather would cooperate when the allotted time rolled around. A government shutdown didn’t even cross my mind back then. Fortunately, although Big Bend is a national park, the park is open, if unstaffed, and the Lodge is run by a private concessionaire, so we’re still a go. On our journey, we’ll also take in other Texas classics including a “Star Party” at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains, a stay in the “James Dean” room at the Paisano Hotel in Marfa and lots more.
Driving straight to Big Bend would take us about nine hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and what fun is that? I wanted to break up the trip, but a first glance at the map showed the Midland-Odessa area to be a likely spot and those light-on-charm oil towns did not exactly inspire. When a little research showed outrageous prices for low-end chain hotel/motels in the area, I looked for alternatives and was thrilled to discover the historic Hotel Settles in nearby Big Spring. The photos looked charming and surprisingly posh and the price was great in comparison to the Midland-Odessa options. We had our first stop!
Big Spring boasts many remnants of the past, like these old gas pumps (with Hotel Settles in the background), in varying states of repair/decripitude.
The 15-story, 150-room Hotel Settles opened on October 1, 1930. The hotel was built by Will R. and Lillian Settles, following the discovery of oil on their ranch. At the time, it was the tallest building between El Paso and Ft. Worth. The Settles only owned the hotel for two years, being forced to sell it when the Great Depression hit and their oil profits fell.
The following years saw a succession of owners. The hotel’s restaurant, the Settles Grill, boasts of famous guests during that time including Elvis Presley, Lawrence Welk, and President Herbert Hoover, as well as Jerry Allison, a Big Spring native and drummer for Buddy Holly and The Crickets.
Although the Settles Grill looked good, the menu at nearby Lumbre appealed more to our personal tastes and we enjoyed a truly excellent meal there: seared tuna steak on lightly sauteed veggies for me and skewers of 8 big, bacon-wrapped shrimp and fish tacos for David.
Big Spring suffered heavy loss of businesses during the oil bust of the late 70’s and the hotel closed its doors in 1982. Over the next decades, the property fell into a derelict state until the local community began a preservation effort. A native of Big Spring bought the hotel in 2006 and invested $30 million in its historically-minded renovation. The original Grand Ballroom was fully refurbished and other rooms restored and given names honoring their regional history. Fascinating photographs throughout the hotel show pictures from Big Spring’s cattle ranching, railroad, and oil boom years as well document the amazing restoration of the hotel. The only negative to this comeback story we heard was from some locals we met at quirky Desert Flower Art Bar (a cool venue offering some of the only craft beer in town along with Texas basics like Shiner beer plus a selection of wine and liquor): Apparently, the Hotel Settles owner (a Fort Worth neighbor of Ross Perot) used no local labor in remodeling the hotel. Very disappointing to hear!
Buildings in Big Spring are a mixed bag
Wandering around town, we found an interesting mix of buildings from the early 1900’s (and a few from the late 1800’s) in various states, many clearly abandoned and in ill-repair, others renovated or in the process of being so. Money has obviously been spent recently in some restoration and Big Springs reminds me somewhat of a Fredricksburg wannabe, a town in decline trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination. With charming old buildings, an infusion of new bars and restaurants, Big Spring State Park and nearby Midland-Odessa oil business, Big Spring has assets to work with.
Practical stuff:
I booked Hotel Settles seven weeks prior via an Expedia flash sale which got us a 1-queen bed room for $109.95 ($97.30 plus taxes & fees of $12.65). A quick check of Expedia a few days prior showed all 1-queen bed rooms sold out and the cheapest remaining room (a 2-queen bed room) offered at $254+$33.02 tax & fees=$287.02! A few moments after that Expedia search, the Hotel Settles web site showed only an “historic suite with parlor” available for $224.00 + $29.12 taxes & services= $253.12. When I checked in, the lady at the front desk was on the phone quoting similar prices to someone who understandably declined to book. It pays to plan ahead and keep an eye out for sales!
Our room is charmingly redone with excellent bedding and the old bathroom “chicken wire” and subway tile restored. The space is on the small side, typical of this era hotel, but well appointed with Keurig coffee maker, plenty of outlets, flat screen tv and a/c. My only quibble would be with the a/c rumbling to life and blowing on the bed during the night, but that’s a problem I find with lots of hotels. There was fairly loud music going on downstairs last night in the Pharmacy Bar, but we could hear nothing upstairs. Electronic keys are required for the elevators, and rooms feel very private and secure.
