Big Bend National Park: Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Texas - August 1st, 2023
This is the last of three posts on Big Bend National Park. Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive is on the western side of Big Bend National Park. By this time, we were camping outside of Big Bend National Park at a private RV park in Terlingua, with full hookups. We needed a place to escape with air conditioning during the heat of the day on the west side of the park. We’ll cover the town of Terlingua in another post.
Tuesday morning, we got up at 7 am and got on the road a little after 8 am. We wanted to get a short hike in before it got too hot. The plan was to hike the Santa Elena Canyon Trail at the end of the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive in Big Bend National Park. The trailhead was about an hour’s drive from our campsite in Terlingua.
The scenic driver was, well, scenic, with some of the prettiest sections of the park we have seen so far. There are several sections along the road with signs that warn you they might be flooded. It rained the night before, so one of those sections was still wet and a couple more had rocky debris strewn across the road.
We arrived at the trailhead, put on our hiking boots, and filled up a couple bottles of water. The hike was only 1.2 miles long, but the trail might be muddy from the rain the night before and temperatures were already rising. We started the trail by 9:30 am.
Well, we didn’t get very far on our hike. There is a creek crossing right near the beginning of the trail. The creek was flowing with lots of mud. We couldn’t see the bottom of the creek, so we didn’t know how deep it was. Signs warned you about thick mud that could be several feet deep and to not enter the creek if it was flowing. The other issue was how to climb up the bank on the other side. Where the hiking trail sign was on the other side was at the top of a vertical, eroded bank, about four to six feet tall.
Posted signs asked you to only cross at the designated point and not find your own spot to cross, to reduce erosion. Another sign indicated there was a concrete ramp up the other side of the creek. However, we saw no evidence of a concrete ramp. It must have washed away at some point. A pair of muddy cowboy boots was abandoned on our side of the creek. OK, we’re not hiking the trail today. So we turned around and headed back to Red Tail (our Winnebago EKKO).
As we were putting our hiking gear away, another vehicle showed up at the trailhead. They were going to attempt the trail. We warned them about the creek crossing, so they were going to check it out. We left before finding out whether they made it across the creek or not. They did tell us that they saw a Mexican black bear just a few miles back up the scenic drive. We kept a lookout for it on the way back.
We had nothing else planned for the day, so we took our time driving back, stopping at all of the viewpoints and historic sites. We even checked out Cottonwood Campground. It is a small campground nestled in the cottonwood trees with a nice breeze from the river. However, they closed it during the summer because of the excessive heat. There was a small picnic area in the campground, so we stopped and had a picnic lunch. Even though the temperatures had crossed into the 100’s, sitting at a picnic table under the shade of a tree with the breeze was comfortable. We must be getting accustomed to the heat.
There are quite a few historic buildings at Castolon. The advantage of going in the off season was that we had the whole place to ourselves. The disadvantage was that many things were not open. The visitor center there was closed for the summer. We also could not go into Magdalina’s House to see the exhibits. However, the little store was open so we bought a couple of cold cans of Dr. Pepper.
From Castolon, we continued our drive through Tuff Canyon. We really liked the contrast of the alternating layers of dark volcanic rock against the layers of white ash or “tuff”. This was also the area where the other group of hikers claimed they saw the black bear. We kept our eyes open for it, but didn’t see one.
From the main scenic drive road, there are a few paved spur roads leading over to some viewpoints. We took them all. At the Burro Mesa Pouroff, there is a one mile trail that looked like it headed over to a canyon. It was tempting, but we were already in the heat of the day. It would have been a very hot, energy draining one mile.
Even though we didn’t go for a hike, we were exhausted by the end of our drive. We’re positive the constant change in temperature, from the AC inside Red Tail to the outside in the temps well above 100 degrees, was stressful on our bodies. It was early afternoon, but we were ready to call it a day and head back to the campground to relax.
On the way through Study Butte, we stopped at the Cottonwood General Store, initially just to buy some ice cream. It was a small store, but we walked out of there with a bag full of groceries. Topping the list was a watermelon, a cucumber, and a couple of cold Cokes, in addition to the four pints of ice cream. Cold and moist seemed to be the theme.
We tried to stop at the gas station, as our tank was down to half. However, all the pumps at the station were closed. We’ll just go to another station in Terlingua. Well, Google and GasBuddy didn’t list any stations in Terlingua. The closest stations were in Lajitas and back at Panther Junction inside Big Bend. We should have gone inside the one in Study Butte to find out more information, like when they were expecting their pumps to reopen. We decided to deal with the gas situation the following day.
We were disappointed that we didn’t get to go on our hike, but our bodies were thankful. The scenic drive was very enjoyable, even without any hiking. Terlingua was a great place to retreat to, just outside the northwestern entrance to Big Bend. We didn’t get to see and do everything inside Big Bend during our nine day visit of the park, but we felt like we got a very good sampling. We’ll be back…when it’s a little cooler.
Check out our related video: Big Bend National Park: Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Texas
(Ann)