West Contrabando Trailhead just down the road from where we are camped is the start of a great trail system. During Prohibition contrabandistas brought huge amounts of liquor out of Mexico to the US border. They risked crossing the Rio Grande to deliver the contraband to American bootleggers who sold it illegally. It’s still Big …
There are so many different viewpoints in Big Bend Ranch State Park but it’s tough to get to all off them because of the remoteness of everything. For our last ride we hopped on our bikes and rode all the way out to Guale Overlook. Again, this is marked on maps as a 4X4 road …
Fort Leaton On our way to our new spot we stopped at Fort Leaton. Established in 1848 as a border trading post by a former Indian bounty hunter, it is an massive adobe fortress. The fort served as a trading post on the old Chihuahua Trail from 1848 to 1884. The adobe walls range in …
Yesterday when we rode the Epic Trail we rode up through Fresno Canyon and was enamored with the beauty. Today we hiked out to an overlook that put us 700 feet up above where we had ridden. This was a 5 mile out and back + some extra we added on hiking around the cliffs …
In Spanish, “cinco tinajas” loosely means “five water filled rock basins”. When we checked in at the Visitors Center the first day, we saw a brochure for this hike and it looked interesting. All in all, the hike was around 5 miles with all our side trips and wandering. The cinco tinajas are a short …
Big Bend Ranch State Park (BBRSP) boasts one of two International Mountain Bike Association rated “Epic Rates” in Texas. The whole loop is 54 miles but we broke it up and did 36 miles of it from camp. We’ll do the other part next week. This loop is a mixture of maintained dirt roads, extremely …
Ask yourself, when is the last time you felt like you were in the middle of nowhere? Remember what it felt like? When I stand and look around as far as I can see there is nothing but mountains, hills, rocks, maybe an occasional longhorn or a burro. It is so incredibly quiet here, there’s …
Davis Mountains State Park We combined the Indian Lodge Loop with an out and back to the scenic overlook on the Skyline Trail. Overall, we hiked 6 miles with 1500′ of climbing. The Indian Lodge Loop started appropriately from Indian Lodge. This is a quaint full service lodge with stark white adobe walls. In 1930 …
Fort Davis National Monument Located in the Davis Mountains and surrounded by views of the Chihuahuan Desert lies the small town of Fort Davis, Texas. The town is named for the military post established there in 1854 along the San Antonio-El Paso Road. Derek and I spent an afternoon touring the historic fort and hiking …
Marfa, Texas On our way to Big Bend State Park we stopped off in Marfa, Texas. After a day mountain biking in Davis Mountain State Park, we took the next couple days to check out the towns of Marfa and nearby Alpine, Texas. Marfa was founded as a railroad water stop in the 1880’s. It’s …