After reading Texas Monthly for years, I’ve always wanted to visit Big Bend National Park in Texas. But it is hard to get to – and that may be the appeal for many. In fact, its one of the least visited of the National Parks.

Big Bend is located far west Texas – the part that’s under New Mexico. The park offers a place to hike, bike, fish, camp, whatever you want and it’s absolutely beautiful. But it’s 653 miles from Houston where we go to visit family. We chose to add a few days after Christmas and make the drive from Houston.

We found a reasonable room at Terlingua Ranch Lodge. Although Terlingua sits three miles from one of the park entrances, the ranch was about 30 minutes north of the park.  That seems far, but in reality it was one of the closer places to stay as Alpine is an hour and a half (83 miles) and Marfa is 2 hours from the park. (more…)