Big Bend National Park, TX

December 2018

This year after Christmas, my family packed into our car for a road trip to Big Bend National Park. We passed through Texas hill country (the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, quaint Fredricksburg, Texas wineries), the Great Plains (flat, dry ranch land, wide-open roads with wind farms on the horizon), arriving in the tiny town of Marathon which got its name because it shares similar terrain as the town of Marathon, Greece. The landscape is ruggedly beautiful and feels like one of America’s last frontiers. We spent the night at the Gage Hotel which was an old railroad hotel that has been preserved/updated with lots of cowboy charm by a Houston oil tycoon. The next morning we drove into Big Bend National Park passing through big signs announcing a government shutdown/limited services. In the freezing cold we hiked the Lost Mines Trail, the Window Trail, and the Balanced Rock Trail. We spent two nights glamping in tepees in Terlingua, an old mining town that is now a ghost town 30 minutes outside of the park. Even though the tepees were really nice on the inside they were also very cold and we spent both nights bundled up. Following our long day of hiking, and due to the government shut down, we spent one day driving to Marfa, where explored the Chinati Foundation, an old military base used to house POW’s after WWII where artist David Judd has created a series of iconic box installations. We visited the Prada Marfa Store, an art installation in the middle of the desert made to look like a Prada store. Our final two days were spent on horseback with two wranglers (Armando and Dakota) who lead us through the vast, exotic landscape of cacti, rock formations, mountain goats and big sky. We camped out under the stars on New Year’s Eve and had s’mores and champagne by the fire to ring in the New Year. This video does not truly capture the beauty of the Chisos Mountains, the Chihuahuan Desert and the incredible remoteness of this area but it does capture the spirit of our road trip out West and the fun we had.