Our first stop this morning was at a big pile of trash. Check it out!

But of course that’s not just any pile of trash. That pile of trash is part of the world’s largest roadrunner!!!

He’s a bit strange since he just hangs out at a rest stop all day with no plaque or anything. I don’t know a thing about his story. But he’s pretty great, obviously!

We then headed back into Texas!

As we drove east on I-10, we waved to Mexico. (I-10 follows the Mexico-U.S. border, so everything you’re seeing in the distance below is Mexico.) Hi, Mexico!

On our way back to Marfa, we encountered our UFO again. This time, it was grounded!

We stopped for dinner at Pizza Foundation in Marfa (again, delicious) and then headed south toward Big Bend… and then things really got interesting.

I had made a reservation at the park lodge (a first for us as we usually stay in a town outside of a national park) since our time in Big Bend will be limited, but since I’ve never been to this park before, I didn’t really know much about where things were located and the like. I assumed we would just find out from the park ranger at the entrance station when we arrived, but I started to get worried when we weren’t on our way until fairly late.

And then the storm started.

It was a completely crazy storm with bouts of intense rain and very bright, very strong lightning everywhere. It was really dark (except when the lightning flashed), so we would just get these occasional glimpses of the huge mountains or whatever was going on right next to us. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s just an unsettling experience to be in unfamiliar terrain in the middle of absolutely nowhere with really tall rocks right next to you that you can only see when the super bright lightning that is flashing in every direction around you — particularly when you don’t really know where you’re going or anything. We started to get scared that the park lodge would be closed when/if we ever arrived and we wouldn’t be able to get in… and of course there was no way to call since we didn’t have any cell service and there were no towns or people anywhere!!

Anyway, we did make it to the park, which was a big relief, but it was probably around 9pm at that point, so the entrance station was unmanned. We had to just hope for some signage to help us find the lodge. Yikes! Fortunately, there was a clearly marked sign eventually, and the road took us over some sharp switchbacks, and we saw a huge sign warning us about being in BEAR AND MOUNTAIN LION COUNTRY USE EXTREME CAUTION OMG!!!!!! I think that was when Brian informed me I would no longer be allowed to make in-park reservations.

Thankfully, we did find the lodge. Unfortunately, it was pretty dark and nothing really looked open. Luckily, someone was bringing trash out from the main building (the lodge here is kind of a mini-complex with a few different buildings with guestrooms, a restaurant, store, etc.), so I jumped out of the car to ask how we could get into our room. She directed me to a bulletin board that had an envelope pinned to it with my name on it. Seriously?? I would NEVER have known about that! The envelope contained our key and a little map to show us how to get to the room. Then, on our way to the building where our room was, we noticed the power go out in the adjacent building. We hoped it was just people turning off their lights for the night, but (spoiler alert) of course it wasn’t.

The rain had stopped at this point and we just saw occasional flashes of heat lightning; the clouds were moving by very quickly, but when the moon wasn’t covered by them, it was really bright. We were finally starting to relax at this point since we had a key and a room and everything and we had survived the drive and the storm, so we decided to hang out in the parking lot of the lodge and take a few pictures of the stunning moonlit landscape…

While we were hanging out there, a couple of other lodge guests came by to chat about the power situation. Apparently something had been damaged by the storm out by El Paso (!) and everything was completely off. One guy told us they were expecting to have it back on in two hours. Sooooo we got out our flashlights and got our stuff into our room without really being able to see very much. What an evening!!

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