Big Bend National Park

Those who have been following my posts will remember that we drove two full days to get to Texas from Washington. We went first to San Antonio and spent two days there enjoying a beautiful guesthouse that some of our children had booked for us. We left San Antonio on a Friday morning and drove on to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas, a place I had always wanted to visited, and arrived there mid-afternoon. We can in the north entrance, stopped at the Panther Gap Visitors' Center and then drove a bit west on the main road and back north on a very rough gravel road to the Grapevine Hills area. We drove first to our campsite, really nothing more than a turnoff with no amenities except a bear box and then drove part of the way back down the road to the trailhead for Balanced Rock where we spent the rest of the afternoon and the early evening hiking before returning to our campsite for the night. The rest of the photos are of the area where we camped and there is one photo of our van parked in our campsite.

Our first stop in Big Bend National Park was the Grapevine Hills area. We camped there a night and hiked there to Balanced Rock, this photo taken along the road to our campsite.

After arriving in Big Bend National Park mid-afternoon we drove the Grapevine Hills road to our first campsite, just a place in the backcountry to park our vehicle for the night. After stopping in at the campsite we drove back down the road to the traiolhead for Balanced Rock and spent the rest of the day hiking there.

No, the photo is not slanted. These were some of the formations along the Grapevine Hills Road in Big Bend National Park in Texas. We were on our way to our campsite when we stopped along the road for this and other photos.

This was where we began our hike to Balanced Rock in Big Bend National Park the afternoon we arrived in the park.

The first hike we did in Big Bend National Park was to Balanced Rock in the Grapevine Hills. It was afternoon by the time we arrived in the park and the hike allowed us to see the sunset at the rock.

Taken at the beginning of a hike to Balanced Rock in Big Bend National Park, the photo shows that it was rather late in the day with the sun going down.

After arriving in Big Bend National Park we drove first the Grapevine Hills Road to our campsite. The park ranger had told us that we would never make it there in our van, but the road was not that bad, though rough, and we made it to the campsite easily. We immediately left again and headed back down the road to the Balanced Rock trailhead which we passed earlier and hiked to Balanced Rock only a little over a mile from the trailhead. The photos posted here are from the beginning of our hike, this looking back in the direction from which we came.

This looks back along the trail we were hiking when the photo was taken, the trail to Balanced Rock in Big Bend National Park. Yuccas and Prickly Pear Cacti are visible along the trail.