Big Bend National Park and Terlingua, TX (March 7-11)

While the "Stars at night were big and bright..." in coastal Texas, stargazing from our campsite in Big Bend Motor Inn and RV Campground in Terlingua, TX was incredible. The weather was warm and dry and "bugless", allowing star viewing late into the night. Here we also experienced some of the best sunrises and sunsets in our adventures to date. The nearby Terlingua Ghost Town and it's ruggedly beautiful ruins and cemetery added further mystery and adventure to our trip. Listening to locals in nearby Miss Tracy's Cafe filled us with wonder at the vast difference in life challenges and terrain/climate in this great country. As the locals discussed storing delivered water in used vinyl barrels, we decided that we were about as far away from Duluth, Minnesota and the seemingly endless water supply of Lake Superior as we could get.

One day, we experienced a frightening "white out" dust storm with wind gusts up to 60 mph while attempting to drive from the far eastern end of the National Park to our campsite outside the Western entrance with our canoe in the car top carrier. We were almost certain that our roof would be torn off or our entire vehicle would be flipped off of some bridge. Needless to say, we survived, car and canoe intact. The only fallout from the storm was what seems like weeks of removing fine dust from home, car, teeth, etc.

In our opinion, the most beautiful view in Big Bend was from the restaurant and it's deck overlooking "the window" of Chisos Basin. We were fortunate enough to experience it the day before the great dust storm. As we made our way across the park on that dusty day, we observed smoke rising over Chisos, and later discovered that the storm had blown over a couple of power poles, starting fires that required evacuation of the Chisos campground. The area was closed for the remainder of our trip.