Big Bend National Park

When we checked into the RV park a sign was posted on the wall “Don’t Pollute, Turn Your Outside Lights Off by 9pm”. Just to see what it was like, we peeked our heads outside last night and witness another very clear and gorgeous starry night. Then we did it again in the morning before sunrise.  This definitely will be one of our most treasured memories of this area.
Today was all about exploring Big Bend National Park. It’s 800,000 acres in size, about 1200 square miles of area. About the size of Rhode Island. We took the main two lane road to Panther Junction visitor center and I showed them my Senior Lifetime pass and was exempted from the $25 park fee. We got some maps. The park is a hiking and off-road park.  Since we were only here for a day, we decided to take the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive  with some hikes and off-roading. First, we hiked to an old ranch house, Sam Neil Ranch.  It had a couple of windmill water wells, some old wooden and adobe structures and some trees and vegetation that was brought in.  One of the windmills was still in service providing water to the ranch vegetation. Our next hike was to Lower Burro Mesa Pour-off (a dry falls). The pour-off was the most interesting hike that took us through a dry creek bed, into a narrow canyon and then to a dry water fall. It was a good and not to challenging hike.

Park Map

To finish off the afternoon, I wanted to take the Old Maverick Road that completed the loop back to the main road. I didn’t want to back track the previous 30 miles.  The off-road trail was 17 miles long but we were only able to get a couple of miles in.  The road was so rough (wash board effect) that I was worried that the truck would fall apart. The road was not well traveled and if we got stranded, it would probably be the next day before we were found…I wasn’t worried, Denise, well, she suggested that we should turn back, I didn’t hesitate.

We are staying at Maverick Ranch RV Park in Lajitas, Tx.  We are at site 79 (the sun is to our patio side, good) and it is a pull-through with concrete pad.  We paid $33/night with a Good Sam’s Membership discount.  We have 50amp electrical, sewer, water, cable TV and Wifi. I was not able to connect to the wifi, too many RV’ers trying to use the service (small bandwidth).  We would stay here again.