I would have been happy to spend today mulling about West Texas, stopping in every dusty two-horse town, but a part of me felt that I needed to see the national park out here.

Since I also like checking off hiking a trail in each national park, today would be dedicated to getting down to and all around West Texas' Big Bend National Park.

South of Alpine, we had covered a good bit of distance since the park's entrance booth. I was adamant that we needed to get out of the car to take in the scenery though, and a pulloff with space for maybe five cars provided just the excuse.

A short trail led to the grave of Nina Seawell Hannold. Nina and her husband Curtis came here from Oklahoma to homestead. They had three children, but it was during Nina's next pregnancy that she contracted ureic poisoning and died on September 30th, 1911 at the age of 29. She asked to be buried here, on the hill that overlooked the cottonwoods where she had read to her children in the shade.

After stopping a few minutes later at Big Bend's Visitors Center for a park map and to use the facilities, we then went another 30 minutes to the southeast until we almost ran out of Texas territory.

It's down here that the short Boquillas Port of Entry Trail brought us to the Rio Grande, where we probably could have walked across, but it was only $5 for a guy to bring you across the river (and international border) in a rowboat.

Once across, there's a whole building casting shade over guides, burros, horses and a few trucks. We could have walked the 1/2 mile (0.8 km) to the Mexican village over here, but it was hot and it made sense to just pay for a truck ride.

Except that Isy was excited about the horses. And even though I'm not the biggest fan of horseback riding, I couldn't exactly jog behind them in this heat. So up I went, struggling with the foothold and feeling sorry for my horse that I yet again didn't keep my "lose weight" New Year's resolution.

It was all worth it though as I was first on my horse, then captured a great picture from behind, right as Isy was swinging her leg over to mount her horse. I framed our guide Jaime perfectly in the window between her thighs, as he looked up wide-eyed from below, lol.

Jaime stuck around to guide us through Boquillas del Carmen, the sleepy village of about 200 people. It's four hours on a rough Mexican highway to get to any sizable settlement from here and the people of Boquillas rely on tourism.

We had lunch and it wasn't all that great, which surprised me as the restaurant has a lot of good reviews. I had high hopes too, after having exceptional tacos when I walked across the border in Del Rio. I chalked it up to the taco stand being much more legit in Ciudad Acuña (it was a neighbourhood spot where only one guy spoke English) than the Boquillas del Carmen restaurant that only exists for Americans doing this little fun walk across the border.

Jaime came back as we were finishing up lunch and we continued our walk through town. He pointed out the town bar and sort of left it up to us with, "there's the bar if you wanted to have a beer."

At this point I was questioning the authenticity of Boquillas del Carmen amidst that mediocre lunch and all the kids selling jewelry by the roadside, but I could still go for a cold'ish beer in this heat. Even if the bar was going to be forgettable.

Walking inside and boy did I get that assumption wrong. I was instantly taken aback at the thought of my dumb ass skipping this place just to one day wonder and find how legit the interior was, compliments of Google Maps.

Assuming I'd get a "sort of cold" beer was stupid too as the bartender reached into a big ice chest and pulled out a frigid Carta Blanca.

You need to apply for a temporary visa if you're going to spend the night in Boquillas del Carmen, but man could I have went for hanging out in this place for a couple hours. What a legit dive.

This was my third time walking across the US-Mexico border, so I don't know if it was worth it for me alone, but overall it was worth it because it got Isy a new country (even if it extended her lead on me for countries visited, by getting one of the few I have that she didn't).

On the way back, the only customs procedure is a park ranger who makes you phone into a border agent. It's on the line that I butchered the pronunciation of "Boquillas" and this ruffled the border agent's feathers a bit, but the park ranger afterwards said that "it took some time for this Missouri boy to learn how everything is pronounced down here too."

Back in the car, we had a 90 minute drive across the majority of the park in order to see the other thing we had planned today. Along the way, I had to pull over and take in some of these views and vibes.

Of late I'd been feeling less joy in the most beloved activities my life. I'd go to a hockey game and want to leave early, and the skatepark wasn't having its 96% success rate of fixing me, and I could easily go to a lighthouse and question if it was worth it. I thought maybe this depressive funk might extend to West Texas and I wouldn't feel the joy of 2010, 2012 or 2016, but I'm happy to report that the dark cloud didn't stretch over Texas - or at least Big Bend was spectacular enough to overcome it.

Even though there were a lot of other things I'd have loved to see in Big Bend, we spent a good chunk of the afternoon driving in order to see the ultimate icon of Big Bend National Park: Santa Elena Canyon.

After an easy crossing of Terlingua Creek, we went up some concrete stairs and then down a slow dirt descent into the canyon. The Santa Elena Canyon holds the Rio Grande here, with 1500 foot walls on each side.

A nearby weather station had only recorded 0.4 mm (0.015 inches) of rain for the year and it was already damn hot down here at the end of April. This Rio Grande wasn't cutting through these limestone walls today, so we moved pretty far down the canyon on sandbars, before taking our shoes off and wading ever further.

When taking off our shoes, we were joined by a family from West Virginia where the patriarch explained that he wasn't scared of snakes or gators(?) here because he has his sidearm - which I suppose is one way to survive encountering a snake, haha.

There's single-day and multi-day floats down the Rio Grande near here and I wish we could have done that, but at least we saw one of the narrowest parts of the canyon. Hell, being able to wade into the water here and share this gigantic canyon with only a few other people made me forget all about those rafting trips.

I find that sometimes the most spectacular feature of a national park isn't my cup of tea because of the popularity or the number of people there, but that isn't the case when you have remote national parks like Big Bend. In 2022, Big Bend had 514 000 visitors while the Grand Canyon had 4.7 million (Michigan's insular Isle Royale only had 26,000!) It's also possible that more people were here earlier in the morning, when the temps were more comfortable.

Just up the road was the Dorgan Sublett Trail, a 1-mile (0.6km) loop that passes four structures left behind by the Sublett family as part of their Grand Canyon Farms.

We were running out of time, so Isy told me to hurry up the hill by myself. I only checked out the first two farmhouses closest to the road though, because if I was going to be walking through the desert, I would not be speedwalking (I would be walking methodically and keeping an eye out for rattlers).

It's a good thing I had already made my mind up that this wasn't enough time in Big Bend National Park, as a return visit someday will include the full Dorgan Sublett Trail.

We now had another 3.5 hours of driving to get to our destination for the night. There's a lovely scenic highway I'd like to drive down here, more ruins, ranger-led birding tours, plus the highpoint of Big Bend; but that will have to wait for hopefully a future trip to Big Bend National Park.

Another place I would have loved to stop was around Study Butte. Terlingua is better known in these parts because of its prominence in tourism, but the two towns are situated close to each other and within an area of gnarly, sharp hills.

Cutting through to get on the TX-118 towards Alpine, I wished so bad that we could finish up and find some accommodations. I longed to watch the sun set on these craggly hills in the eerie silence out here.

Instead we continued to Alpine, where we grabbed tacos from a takeout window attached to a dollar store. While waiting, I called our motel in Van Horn and was told that I needed to read out my credit card number if I wanted the room held - which was fun because the guy sitting at the other picnic table was talking about getting out of jail and had a good amount of ratty neck/face tattoos, haha.

Hopping in our car and moving along with our tacos, we ate some of them by Alpine's fine 1887 county courthouse. Alpine is another town I'd like to spend the night in.

Another new place we'd head through was Marfa, which seemed like a cool, although hipstery, place in all the coverage I've seen. When looking into accommodations though, I realized Marfa is so hipster and chic that it's out of my price range! $375USD for an old roadside motel just because it's now nice enough for influencers! Not to mention, if I was going to spend anywhere near that amount of coin, it'd be in nearby Fort Davis, which seemed a lot cooler than Marfa.

We almost stopped in Marfa anyway, as Isy noticed a ramshackle old bar with a neon sign. "Wow, look at that bar. I want a drink there!"

I told her it was the bar from Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations West Texas episode and we both contemplated turning around for a quick Lone Star/Jameson's. We pulled up to a light and still not making up my mind, I pulled into Marfa's main gas station and thought for a moment or two more.

I'm trying to be better at this, but if I'm in a certain mood, I'll let a factor that's really insignificant give me a reason to avoid doing something. So still having an hour to get to Van Horn, I decided to focus on that instead of overcoming the anxiety of walking into a strange dive bar.

It's funny to look back now, with how much has changed since 2022, and all of the additional things that would need to align in order for us to now have a quick drink at the same Marfa bar as Bourdain. In hindsight, it was a silly decision. What did it matter if we got to the motel in Van Horn at 1045 instead of 1115?

Anyway, I'm happy that we did make time for stopping at the Prada store outside Marfa. And since we weren't staying in Marfa, we almost had enough money to buy something!

(It's not an actual Prada store, it's an art installation.)

We didn't even need to weigh accepting the price of accommodations in Marfa, since I'd already spent the night in Van Horn and knew about the great rates over there. The last time I stayed in a fancy hotel in Van Horn, but the Taylor Motel was great and I loved the fun little slots for your car right beside the room.

Our car was a tight fit and you can see that these spaces are a relic from the motel's 1930's construction, when not everyone had a giant truck.

In the end, I sat outside and enjoyed the Van Horn night, which was a bit funny because we could have just stopped for 20 minutes back in Marfa. I have a nice memory of this time just the same.

In the morning, I went to a nearby city park and photographed some birds and flowers while Isy got ready. From there we headed north on the familiar TX-54 that I'd driven to climb the highpoint of Texas (Guadeloupe Peak) previously.

I didn't need to climb the highpoint again and instead, we soon exited Texas.

More to come.