We made it to Big Bend National Park!

We left Seminole Canyon State Park in the morning, starting an unusually long (for us) drive in the motor home. We have been trying to get camping reservations in the area around Big Bend National Park for weeks. But we found that all the sites are already booked for Texas's spring break week. In addition, campgrounds charge a premium during that week. So we have adjusted our arrival time and hurried our schedule in order to arrive five days before spring break. So this drive to our next campground was a longer-than-normal 223 miles. We approached Big Bend National Park from the northeast side, and we started seeing some of the layers of mountains and buttes as we got closer.

Part of that long drive included a stop to fill up the motor home with diesel. We were driving into an area known for its lack of service stations and grocery stores. So we wanted to arrive with full fuel tanks and refrigerator. Even though this last fill-up wasn't inexpensive at $4.45 per gallon of diesel, it is cheaper than what we would find down the road.

It was 174 miles and took almost three hours to drive to Persimmon Gap, the less-used northeast entrance of Big Bend National Park. It takes an hour to drive from one end of the park to the other, so we don't plan to be in this section of the park again. Shortly after entering the park, we decided to pull over and take a hike. We found room in the trail head parking lot for the motor home, and started across the desert floor on the Dog Canyon Trail.

There's no shade, and it was in the 80s in the afternoon sun as we made our way through the cactus and prickly bushes of the desert.

After a mile we reached the dry creek bed, where we hiked the rest of the way on river rocks and sand.

This seems like a good time to mention that we are loving the tangerines that we picked off Denisa's Mother's tree in the Rio Grande Valley. All the citrus fruit needed to be off the trees, and we filled her refrigerator and ours with these delicate tangerines. But they are great hiking companions, and they are a great thirst-quencher and energy-booster on a hot day like today. This tangerine was as big as Denisa's hand, and very juicy.

As we approached the mouth of the canyon, we saw the rock walls were getting taller.

In fact, you will have to look carefully to see Mark in his navy shirt at the base of this canyon wall in the picture below.

We love hikes through deep canyons, and we found one here at Dog Canyon. 

It's hard to keep Mark on the floor of the canyon, with so many massive rocks just begging to be climbed. He liked the looks of this narrow fin, so he decided to climb as far as he could. You can see that he made some progress up that narrow fin that looked quite big with him standing beside it.

But that fin was actually quite small when compared to the massive canyon wall on the other side of it.

Dog Canyon was named for the pet that was escorting its family through this canyon. The wagon was found here, but the remains of the family were never located. The loyal dog was still standing beside the wagon when it was found, so the canyon has been known as Dog Canyon ever since.

We hiked all the way through the canyon, and then turned around to head back to the motor home. On our way back, we spotted this dark hole at the base of one of the walls. We saw movement, so we zoomed in with the camera.

That's when we found that hole was a wasp nest. They were crawling up and around that hole, buzzing us if we got close. We picked up speed and got out of there faster than we planned.

The total hike was 4.7 miles, with the last mile through that flat shadeless desert. We can see the silhouettes of the mountains of Big Bend National Park, and we're excited to get to that part of this big park.

After our hike, it was another 50 miles through the national park to get to our campground on the other side, in the town of Terlingua. The speed limit inside this big park is 45 miles per hour, so we had over an hour of driving through Big Bend. By evening we were settled into our site at Study Butte RV Campground right outside of the national park in the quirky little town of Terlingua. We're glad that we finally made it to Big Bend National Park, and we were welcomed with the first sunset of our stay.