The Road to Presidio

Posted by hankster

Instead of visiting Big Bend today I went and took a drive to Presidio, a town about 70 miles west. I have already driven every paved road in the park and the dirt roads were not in good enough condition from rain over the past two days that I wanted to take that chance. I had heard the drive to Presidio was nice and figured it would be a good way to see something different.

I headed out late in the morning and the first "town" about 5 miles on FM170 is the Terlingua Ghost Town. I didn't stop, figured I stop on the way back. On trips like this where I plan on back tracking I'll drive straight through to the end point, checking out places to stop, and then stop at those places on the way back as time permits.

Another 12 miles puts you in Lajitas. This is a bit of an interesting place as it has been built up with a real fancy motel and RV park. Problem is that it's location 25 miles from the entrance to Big Bend means it just doesn't get the traffic or guests that the investors hoped. I have heard it is in financial trouble. I almost chose to stay at the RV park here so I drove through. The park is really nice and fancy. Big stone entrance, lots of landscaping on the access road and large grassy RV lots, but only about 6 rigs were there.

I headed on west to and the road quickly narrowed to a normal paved country road, fairly narrow with little to no shoulder. It also quickly started to get into the mountains. The road ended up being very curvy with many hills and large drop offs on one side with solid stone walls towering on the other. The speed limit said 50mph but I was lucky to do 40 in most places. One part of the road is a 15% grade, both going up and going down! Even though I dropped the tranny down to first gear and started at 10mph, I reached 35mph by the time I hit the bottom of the hill (not using my brakes). Thinking I would have wore off 10,000 miles of brake pad if I didn't down shift.

The 70 miles trip ended up taking close to 2 hours to complete. Then I had to turn around and drive the same road back. I only drove into Presidio for a little bit, just far enough to find gas station so I could releave myself, dewater Spud and grab a G. There didn't seem to be much interesting there and since I got a later start I wanted to head back. On the way back I stopped a number of places to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. I will have to say that this is one of the most beautiful drives I have ever done, even better then any drive within Big Bend National Park. The road puts you right in the middle of the mountains and there are many different rock types and formations to experience. It's a drive no one should miss.

Here are a few photos that I took.