Last day in Big Bend National Park

My schedule said that I would spend the last day of my stay in Big Bend National Park, in the South-East corner of the park. It looked like an easy day with no too many miles behind the wheel.

My first stop would be Santa Elena Canyon. This canyon is the border between Mexico and the US. I spend the night in Terlingua, just outside the park. Coming from Terlingua there are two options to go to the canyon: i) the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, which would be the option with the most miles, and ii) Old Maverick Road, which is a gravel road. I’ve driven on gravel roads before, without any serious issues, so how hard could it be?

At Maverick Junction, I turned onto Maverick road. A traffic sign said ‘high clearance’. My car had medium high clearance and I assumed this was probably some new liability prevention requirement from the legal department of the park.


Already after half a mile I found out that the condition of this gravel road didn’t meet my standard for a maintained gravel road. There was a significant washboard effect, which required me to reduce the speed to about 10 mph.


There is something good in everything. In the case of Old Maverick Road, not too many people were foolish enough too take this road. This gave me plenty of opportunity to take photos from the wonderful scenery.


While going 10mph, I was still puzzled about the ‘high clearance’ sign. It became clear to me after a few miles. I’m used to the situation where a road will cross a river or creek with a bridge. In the Big Bend, they have a different solution.... they cross at they same level. Don’t drive a sedan around this area during a thunderstorm.


More shots of Sana Elena Canyon.


After a few hours on Old Maverick road, I made it to Santa Elena Canyon. Mexico is on the left and the US, where I was, is on the right. You can imagin how easy it is to cross the border. The hard part is that this point is almost 100 miles away from any city and there is a lot of border police with check points I hope the US doesn’t decide to put an iron curtain through the Big Bend, like they have done at other locations along the Mexican-US border.




I continued my day trip to Cantelon. Along the way I spotted Cerro Castalon. The peak of the mountain is only 3300ft over sea level, but it makes a great photo because it is surrounded by flat desert.


My last stop for today was Chisos Basin. This is not actually a village. It is just a collection of a few dozen cabins, a little store, a visitor center and most important a restaurant. I only had a couple of candy bars during the day. I finished my burger on time to walk over to ‘the Window’. I was on time and talked with a few of the other tourists who were also waiting for sunset.