Visiting Our National Parks — Big Bend

After our five days at Davis Mountains State Park, we headed south to Big Bend National Park. This park is a must for any travel bucket list. It’s not hard to figure out why.

This park is HUGE, over 800,000 acres. If that doesn’t mean anything, it has multiple gas stations on the park grounds. Our RV park was at the South end and it took us over a half hour from entering the main gate to the campsite. Once in the park, we were surrounded by nature’s majesty (but not by phone or internet — this is when we went completely off the radar). There is nowhere to look that doesn’t make your mouth gape in awe.

 

The park is a unique mix of mountains, desert terrain, and big sky.

 

There were only two things that kept the trip from being perfect. Firstly, it rained during most of our stay so we did not get to explore much outside of the car. Secondly, the RV park was less than optimum. There are three RV campsites on Big Bend but only one had both hook-ups and could accommodate as large a trailer as we have (32′, really 35′ with the sway bar extension). This was the Rio Valley Campground. We were deceived by the word campground. It should have been called RV parking lot. The spots were tight together both across and side by side with no green space between.

It was quite a let-down after the beautiful spot we had at the Davis Mountains State Park. On a happy note, it was one of the many times that a more experienced RV/Travel Trailer driver came out to help as we had zero experience backing into this tiny spot. (And frankly, I am lousy at directing Mr. Hero in this process.)

We would love to return to Big Bend in better weather to do more hiking and exploring. We will probably choose to stay just outside the park in one of the private resorts. Chalk it up to another #lessonlearnedthehardway #lessonlearned.

One more check on the “We Were Here” map!

 

Have you visited Big Bend?

I’m sharing this experience with Sundays in My City at Unknown Mami.