My favorite travel friend extended yet another companion airline pass so I could tag along on his Southwestern National Park adventure. We flew into El Paso, picked up our rental and headed south, straight to Terlingua, TX. A ghost town just north of Big Bend National Park. Our only stop on the way down was a grocery store and a sunset visit to Marfa.

After a couple of immigration/border control checkpoints, we arrived in the dark to our teeny AirBnB nestled in dark sky country.

There was a waning gibbous moon. With a quick check of the Ephemeris app, I was able to catch the milky way in between sunset and moonrise.

Our first hike of the day was the Window Trail.

This trail descends 1000 feet with many switch backs and gains 1000 feet on the way back for a total of 6 miles. There were reports of bears and goats along the way. We did not see the bear, thankfully.

After getting our arse handed to us on that trail we headed to Santa Elena Canyon.

This was the 1st of two Rio Grande crossings where I had one foot in the USA and one in Mexico.

We also trekked Tuff Canyon. (this we did twice)

This is a great spot for bouldering.

Mules Ears