My main purpose was to finally get to the Big Bend National Park. A few years earlier I had spent the night in the town of Alpine, an hour north of the park, and would visit the park the next morning before heading to El Paso to visit the Sun Bowl (coolest name of all bowls/stadiums) and photograph the campus sign there. However, while at Alpine, I saw that some big event was happening the next afternoon at the Sun Bowl. I knew that would mean I could not get near the stadium then. So I decided to skip Big Bend and go straight to the Sun Bowl before the event started. This trip is to visit Big Bend.

Big Bend National Park turned out to be much better than I was expecting after "driving" through the park using Google Streets View. I was expecting flat mostly barren desert type terrain and a few mountains. WRONG! It turned out to be maybe 100 mountains. And, one of the two visitors centers -- Chisos Basin -- was up on one of the mountains with a great view of much of the park area. The other visitor center is called Panther and I visited it first since I came to it first. My other pleasant surprise was how varied the vegetation is -- various trees and cactus and even wild flowers. Took many photos,

An advantage to this trip vs. the oh-so-close-but-missedin 2017 was that in 2017 I would have entered and exited the park on the same highway 118. This time, I got to do a U-shaped trip through the park by coming in on highway 385 and out on highway 118. And, I photographed the park sign on both highways.