On To Big Bend Country

From Sonora on to Big Bend, you quickly and ever more so come to understand that you are entering into the northern regions of the Chihuahuan Desert.  This is some of the driest, most desolate, and least populated area of the country.  Once we turned south off I10 at Fort Stockton, the land became more and more forsaken.

This was a big day of travel for us – nearly 300 miles, but we were up early and out quickly.  Big Bend National Park is about 150 miles south from the freeway and there isn’t much else down that way.  But it is one of the few parks Gary has never visited in all of his travels.  Even the wind farms we saw along the expressway were no more when we turned further south into the desert.  The two lane highway from Fort Stockton to Alpine was posted with a 75mph speed limit.  In that 50 mile stretch we saw fewer than 10 vehicles.  And south of Alpine, it becomes even more desolate, windy, and dusty.

But the backdrop for our campsite is awfully hard to beat!