October 8, 2023 – Big Bend Ranch State Park and Presidio, TX

Sunday, we decided to not visit Big Bend National Park because it was so busy yesterday.  We are hoping it will be less crowded on Monday.  Instead, we drove west on Highway 170 which is called Camino Del Rio (The River Road) through Big Bend Ranch State Park to Presidio, TX. 


We first stopped at The Terlingua Ghost Town.  The Terlingua Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 and holds the largest concentration of mining architecture in the area.  Some of the buildings have been restored as shops, restaurants, and homes but many are like this stone house.


The River Road follows the Rio Grande River and goes through the southern part of Big Ben Ranch State Park.   The park is the largest state park in Texas, with over 300,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert wilderness.





We saw something down the road in the middle of our lane.  As we got closer, we saw a Javelina looking right at us and then it ran on across the road.  Two more ran across in front of us and we did get a picture of the tail end of the last one.





        We saw a lot of interesting rock formations.








The farther we drove the more mountainous it became, and the canyons were beautiful.







We liked this picnic area with teepees over the picnic tables.







At the other end of this picnic area, we spied a whole herd of wild Mustangs!








The view of the Rio Gande River from this overlook was beautiful.







Another beautiful view of the river.







We saw three canoes going down river and it looked like a great way to beat the heat.






Another beautiful deep canyon.






The last overlook we stopped at had a trail down to some interesting hoodoos. 

We then drove to Presidio where we found a restaurant that would allow us to bring Tacky in with us.  We had a great lunch in a nice, air-conditioned restaurant.  After lunch we drove back down The River Road to our RV park.  This was a beautiful drive, and we enjoyed our day.






We were treated with another beautiful sunset this evening.




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