Day 21 - Today is our last day in Big Bend with a campsite at Nine Point Draw and nothing special planned for the day. With two weeks of exploration, we feel we have had a good overview of the park and want to take it easy. Sure, we have missed a few things, but it's not possible to see it all in just two weeks and we figure it gives us a reason to come back again.
Yesterday was overcast all day and thunderstorms finally rolled in overnight. The moisture on everything this morning highlighted the colors of the mountains and desert plants. Big Bend doesn't have the wildlife of Yellowstone or the majesty of Glacier, but the Chihuahuan Desert is beautiful in it's own way. We have enjoyed our time here, mostly for the solitude it provided. This park is still what a National Park should be, a place to enjoy nature. Many of my favorite National Parks are now so busy during all seasons that I no longer enjoy visiting them due to the crowds and traffic. The roads in Yellowstone are like driving in the city at rush hour and it's hard to find a moment to yourself on many of the hiking trails in Zion. This was not the case in Big Bend. We especially liked the backcountry campsites reachable by primitive 4x4 roads. Every campsite we stayed at was located in such a way that we could neither see nor hear another human except for the rare passerby on the road, yet we had easy access to all areas of the park including more remote locations most people never see. Ernst Tinaja was probably our single favorite location off the beaten path. It was a fairly easy drive on the south end of Old Ore Road then an even easier walk to a beautiful display of geology, yet we saw no one on the trail and only saw one other couple in the parking area after we got back to the truck.
Day 22 - On our last night in Big Bend we were finally forced to deal with one of the many illegal campers we saw in the park. A couple in an SUV pulled into our backcountry site at 1am and started to set up camp. I had to crawl out of bed and politely inform the gentleman unloading his gear that he was illegally camping without a permit, but more importantly that this was our campsite and he wasn't welcome. It took a little more explanation before I convinced him to move on. Illegal camping, both knowingly and ignorantly, is a noticable problem in Big Bend. We saw several during our stay but did not have an actual encounter until the last night. There was virtually no law enforcement presence and we saw no one receive a ticket.
Today we moved on to Davis Mountain State Park with a stop at Alpine for groceries followed by a stop for lunch at the Drugstore Restaurant in Fort Davis where we had excellent hamburgers and mikshakes. We got to the State Park in time for a nice hot shower and good walk with the dogs before dark.
Day 23 - This morning we headed to Fort Davis National Historic Site and toured the old Army Fort. It was an interesting look back at another time and place with several fully restored buildings to visit.
It was below freezing at Davis Mountain the previous night, so we decided to head up the road towards Alamogordo where it was forecast to be 10 degrees warmer. We camped for the night at Red Sands OHV Area. Easy access close to the highway meant road noise, but that mostly ended at a reasonable hour and this was an otherwise quiet location overnight. Public OHV areas on BLM land often allow camping, usually nothing more than a very large dirt parking area, which is what this was with a few sand dunes thrown in for a little privacy. There were only two other campers here though there was room for many others. It was nothing special for the humans, but the dogs really liked it because they were allowed to run free and it was all sand and no cactus with their nasty thorns. We have really good voice control over the dogs and OHV people don't seem to mind them being loose so long as we don't let them wander into other camps.
Day 24 - We wanted to see both the New Mexico Space History Museum and the White Sands Missle Range Museum. Since today was a federal holiday, the Missle Range Museum was closed. But the Space Museum was open, so that's where we went. We ended up spending about 3 hours there. I could have stayed all day trying to land the space shuttle on a free simulator, but my partner lost patience and I had to leave. We enjoyed both the museum and the live star show at the planetarium and thought it worth the entrance fees.
I wanted to check out a small set of free campsites I found online that are in the Organ Mountain Desert Monument at the Sierra Vista Trailhead near Las Cruces, so we headed there for the night. We arrived at 3:30 pm and took one of two open sites out of 6 total, choosing the last site just down a small hill offering a little privacy from everyone else. The last campsite was soon taken and there were a few latecomers in campervans that parked in the trailhead parking lot for the night. Everyone was respectful and this was a very quiet location with nice views.
Edited by Sleddog, 24 February 2020 - 04:46 AM.
