Big Bend National Park

Deep in far West Texas on the Mexican border, about five and a half hours southeast of El Paso, Big Bend is a vast borderland where the wild Rio Grande carves three great canyons through Chihuahuan Desert and the Chisos Mountains. At Santa Elena Canyon, 1,500 foot limestone walls rise straight from the river, and at Boquillas, visitors can cross into Mexico by rowboat for lunch in a riverside village. Come from November through March, when daytime temperatures sit in the 60s and 70s. Desert wildflowers follow in early spring.