Chisos Basin

After driving for 15 hours over a day and three quarters, we arrived at Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park the afternoon of March 6.

On the way into the park, we saw bluebonnet, the Texas state flower in full bloom along the roads. It grows wild in patches throughout the park, but seems to like the roadside.

We stopped at an exhibit about the Quetzalcoatlus, a huge flying dinosaur, with fossils found at Big Bend. It had a wingspan up to 36 feet, and weighed around 500 pounds.

We did a walk around the Chisos Basin Loop Trail and the short Window View Trail.

Got some bird photos.

We caught the sunset through the window.

This was one of the best sunsets we saw there.

The next morning, we got up early and hiked the Lost Mine trail.

Then after lunch at the lodge, we hiked the Window trail down to the top of the pour off at the bottom of the window and back up to the lodge.

The window trail ends at the pour off, where the water goes over the edge off the cliff. The bottom portion of this trail is only open when its dry.

It was a lot of hiking, 31,000+ steps, over 12 miles, 1700 ft of climbing.

The sunset on the 7th was cloudy, not much to look at. It was cloudy at night as well, Big Bend is supposed to be a wonderful place to see the stars as there is little light pollution. But you can’t see the stars when it is overcast as it was every night we were there. The rains came the day we left.