We spent Sunday night at the Abilene KOA, and we made it to Stillwell Store and Campground by early afternoon Monday. The campgrounds d where we are is just a huge gravel area, but there is power and water plus big sites. For $25 I won’t complain!
This will be a somewhat disjointed post since we have pretty bad WiFi at the Visitor Center, and no data on the phone at all most of the time. Tuesday we did a lot of driving – into the park on the main drive, then headed west to Maverick Junction and the dirt Old Maverick Road, the back to hard surface road to Sana’a Elena Canyon, Castolon, and back to the entrance road. It was a long day.
I hadn’t been to Big Bend since my senior year in college, so I had no memory of the scenery. It is Chihuahuan desert, different from the Mohave, Sonoran, and Great Basin deserts I am familiar with. Nice mountains. Lots of volcanic rock intermixed with old sedimentary rock.
The park service has left more signs of humans here than in any other park I have visited.
We saw a lot of roadrunners, but only one cooperated for a (poor) picture.
We also saw a few mule deer. This one was hanging out less than a mile from the Panther Junction Visitor Center.
I will post day 2 tomorrow since we are still on it!