We’ve spent the better part (in more ways than one) of a week in Texas, and we like what we’ve seen so far.

Davis Mountains State Park and the area around it—including the towns of Fort Davis, Alpine, and Marfa—provided a warm introduction to “Far West” Texas. We saw a historic fort named for the president of a country that fought the U.S. in our bloodiest war, ate ginormous breakfast burritos in someone’s backyard, and strolled through an indoor/outdoor botanical and cactus garden.

Our next stop was Big Bend National Park. I’ve been kind of obsessed with visiting here since grade school back in Massachusetts, when we studied the National Parks and I wondered what circumstances might ever bring me to this remote slice of southern Texas jammed up against the Mexican border. (I was similarly obsessed with Glacier National Park in the wilds of northern Montana, which I finally got to see a couple years ago.) Still, I was worried that three days would be too long a stay at Big Bend and we would run out of things to see and do. In hindsight, that seems like a pretty stupid concern.

With 800,000 acres of varied terrain—from the dry Chihuahuan Desert, to the rugged Chisos Mountains, to the lush green ribbon of the Rio Grande—there was more than enough to keep us entertained. You can check out some of what we saw and did in the gallery below.

This was also one of the least crowded National Parks we’ve been to, so we really got to feel the isolation of the region. The oppressive heat probably scared away some visitors. It got progressively warmer each day we were there, and last night trying to sleep in our tiny travel trailer was like being in a tin can on a hot stove. There is full-hookup RV parking on the other side of Big Bend, where we could have used our air conditioner, but I had chosen a more scenic and rustic campground—a decision Maureen was kind enough not to criticize even after a sweltering night without sleep! Poor Zora with the last of her winter fur coat had the worst of it, and panted like a steam engine all night long.

The heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow, when we head to San Antonio. The place we’re staying tonight, Seminole Canyon State Park, has electricity to run our air conditioning and there’s even a passable (depending on which way the wind is blowing) T-Mobile signal that I’m using to write this post as we hunker down against the heat. Unfortunately, there’s not enough bandwidth to post videos yet, so that will have to wait until we reach civilization—or at least what passes for it in San Antonio.