The Big Bend National Park is roughly 500 miles west of Rockport and a destination that I've been wanting to visit since I learned about it in the 5th grade. I have traveled extensively in and through the eastern half of the United States, but until now haven't been much further west than Laredo, Texas. This trip whirlwind of a three day weekend trip was honestly a little random, but we (Vincent, Scott, and I) had been wanting to go on a road trip together for quite a while, so I am glad that we were able to make it happen. Not only was this my first trip to the Big Bend, it was also the first time any of us had used AirBnb before.
Driving through Texas can be extremely boring, but I loved watching the landscape morph into the desert ecosystem. Our AirBnb was in Alpine, a small and dusty college town that had an amazing pizza joint called Guzzi Up. If you're in Alpine I would highly recommend any of their specialty pizzas and their spinach/artichoke dip. Alpine is a little over an hour away from Big Bend, but the drive was super easy and scenic.
One thing that really surprised me about the desert environment was how colorful it is when you look closely. From a distance, like in the photos above, there doesn't seem to be much color variation, but the longer we spent exploring, the more color I noticed.
Here is the border to Mexico!This portion of the Big Bend National Park is adjacent to Cañon de Santa Elena National Park in Chihuahua, Mexico. I loved how fertile the land was along the Rio Grande river.