Big Bend National Park
Link to more photos. View the photos individually to see the captions.
This tour took us to all four national parks in Texas and New Mexico and a few additional stops. The temperature was frequently above 100, and we used four different buses, which required adjusting the itinerary for lost time. But despite the heat and the bus issues, the trip was a success.
Our first stop was McDonald Observatory. When I drove between Los Angeles and San Antonio, I always saw the turn-off for the observatory, but because it is more than 30 miles off of the interstate highway, I had never visited. We had an excellent tour guide.
We continued to Big Bend National Park, another Texas attraction I had never visited, mainly because it is so remote. On the first night there, I lucked upon a spectacular sunset photo (above).
The next day's highlight was Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande, sadly nearly completely dry (see photos). The lowlight: A road construction crew had one piece of equipment sticking out too far, and it damaged several panels of our bus! Investigating and reporting the accident involved federal officers and much time. Since the nearest replacement bus was many hours away from Big Bend, we were happy that our bus remained drivable.
The next day, we changed to a new bus as we left the park. We had lunch in Marfa and stopped at the famous Prada art installation there.
We made a brief stop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, but saw nothing that really interested me.
The next morning, our bus driver noticed a leak under the bus, and we waited several hours for a replacement bus. It was older and from a different company, so we were told we would get yet another bus the next day!
We stopped at the Living Desert Zoo and then proceeded to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I had visited Carlsbad Caverns when I was maybe twelve; Victor, of course, had never been there.
The next day, with our fourth and final bus, we went to White Sands National Park. I was at a different portion of the park on a 2013 tour of New Mexico's "Space Trail".
The next morning, after a short stop at Old Mesilla, we returned to El Paso for our flight home.
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