Big Bend National Park and its surrounds are one of the most astonishingly beautiful places to visit in the United States. Though quite remote, it's well worth making into your primary destination or just going out of your way to visit. The park is vast. Two or three days there will allow you to see only the most accessible highlights. To fully explore Big Bend and the surrounding area takes years of visits.
Though inhabited for hundreds of years, Big Bend is mostly true wilderness. While roads and hiking trails thread through the park, visitors rarely stray far off them, leaving hundreds of square miles where even park rangers rarely tread. Wander off the established roads and paths and you likely will be in a spot where another person might not be for months or even years! The park really belongs to the wildlife.
If you're new to the area, plan your trip in advance. Big Bend is genuinely remote and little is close together. The nearest commercial airport is in Midland or El Paso, 300 plus miles away. Park residents drive seventy miles to buy groceries or to take their kids to a doctor. Services can be limited and scattered. Commerical lodging and dining is not plentiful and, during prime seasons like Easter and spring break, can be booked up long in advance. This is not a place for a car prone to frequent breakdowns. Watch your gas gauge - running low can be a problem if the nearest open station is fifty miles away. Back road travelers might see only one or two other cars even on a busy day. Tens of thousands of visitors pass through annually without the slightest problem. But - visitors who wander the back country unprepared are asking for trouble - people can and do die there.
Spring and fall, followed by winter, are the best seasons to see Big Bend. Summer in the desert gets really hot. If you must come during the summer months the Basin area of the Chisos mountains is the coolest place to be. The Basin also offers the park proper's only lodging and restaurant.
Lodging is available in a motel and cottages in the Basin area of the park, in the villages of Study Butte, Terlingua and Lajitas on the western side of the park. Upscale and moderate hotels can be found within reasonable (70 mi.) driving distance in Marfa and Marathon. Big Bend is camping heaven. Campsites range from quite civilized in the Basin (water, restrooms, store, and restaurant within walking distance) and at Rio Grande Village (water, restrooms, store, pay showers, gasoline) to level graded gravel sites along the back country roads, to little more than a clear spot along the hiking trails. The Basin is the start of the most popular hiking trails, ranging from easy to strenuous. The Basin camping area fills up fairly often, the Village area rarely. There are almost always campsites available along the dirt roads but a high clearance vehicle is a definite requirement to reach most of them.
