I underestimated the beauty I would find in this little gem on the edge of the desert. It was definitely worth the trip. We stayed at a hotel/restaurant/rv park outside of Terlingua...which we were thankful for once we saw how closely packed the RVs were in the park. We had a nice view right outside of our camper and even a trail to explore the smaller mountains around us.
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| Lots of exploration and play right outside our camper. I showed Gracie how to make paint with some crushed rock and egg yolk. She painted a pictograph on a flat rock and placed it under a cactus at our campsite so that someone could find it and think it was put there by Indians lol |
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| This was a house off one of the primitive roads in the park. A man named Luna raised his family here and even farmed the land. I couldn't believe that was even possible, the conditions are so harsh...but he lived to be over 100! |
Santa Elena Canyon
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Hiking the Hot Springs Canyon.
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These pictures were all taken while it was cloudy and cool. We got to the end of the trail about 2 hours later while the sun was out and had to hike back with a scarce water supply. We realized at the end that there were 2 different trails...the Hot Springs Canyon and Hot Springs loop. We took the 3 mile Canyon hike instead of the 1.5 we thought we were on. We got to cool off in the Rio Grande River for a bit then hiked the 3 miles back. The kids wanted us to leave them to die in the hot desert sun lol Gracie was even crying. We made it back and treated them to ice cream.
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| Mexico-left / US-right |
In the Chisos mountain basin, the plant and wildlife diversity was soo different than anywhere else in the park.
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| We hung out on this rock for a bit. After torturing the girls the day before we took lots of breaks on this hike. |
