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Good morning adventurers. Good morning. And welcome to one of the most underrated and least visited parks in the entire USA. That is right. This is Big Bend. That's some good energy. And this is big energy. It's easy to do when you really are in an incredibly beautiful place. We decided to take the truck through Big Bend because it just seemed like it was the best fit. It just is completely in its element out here. And unlike little Ruby Suzuki, it has AC. Yeah. The downside is it is a very bumpy and very loud. Rev that engine. It's the sound of sheer power. And very expensive fuel. So way out in Southwest Texas, right on the USA-Mexico border, you are going to find Big Bend National Park. This park is super special because the Rio Grande River
flows right through it and actually marks the border between USA and Mexico. And there are these huge bends in the river, which obviously is where the park gets its name. You guys might have noticed that we don't really ever film in National Parks. And that is because it is completely illegal for us to film for any commercial benefit in National Parks. So that means if we post a video with any kind of monetization on it, we could get banned from the National Parks or get fined. And anytime we did film, we actually had to apply a month in advance and pay a lot of crazy fees. Basically, we had to do the exact same thing that Ron Howard would
have to do if he wanted to come and film a blockbuster movie in a National Park. But that all has completely changed and we only just learned this. Apparently, they came up with the Explorer Act earlier in the year and that allows a group of up to eight people to come into the park and film whatever the heck they want for whatever reason they want and it is awesome. No more permits, no more crazy fees, no more month-long waiting process. It's amazing. It's so cool because National Parks are jam, you guys. Getting out into nature and taking you guys with us is something that we love to do. We haven't been able to do it. To celebrate this, we figured we should do an all-out full-on episode about one
of our favorite and one of the most underrated National Parks in the entire country and that is Big Bend. But the scenery here is just incredibly beautiful. It's going to completely blow you guys away. It is so huge. There is so much to do and we are going to get into all of that. But first, we have to take one of the most beautiful drives in the park. It's called Something Maxwell Scenic Drive. Okay, we'll put it on the screen. That's what it's called and we're going to do it right now. Well, as expected, this is the perfect start to our travels here in Big Bend.
The drive has been absolutely stunning and it just winds through the mountains. There's all these huge boulders off in the distance. The landscape just changes so quickly. And now there's actually a lot of greenery and I think that is because we are getting close to the Rio Grande River. You can actually see off in the distance this huge chasm and that is where we are headed cuz it should be one of the most beautiful and iconic areas in the entire park. Let's go into the chasm and do a pretty hike. Parts of the river are all dried up and cracking into these huge pieces. Looks like little chocolate bars.
Some chocolate for you. How much money for you to take a bite of this? No, thank you. Please? It's probably part of some health regimen though. Get it out of here. Selfie mode. Just proof that I was here in case the video's not enough. Well, this is the Santa Elena Canyon Trail and I think we picked maybe the best hike to start here in where are we? Big Bend? Shh, I lost it. Look at this crazy green water. There's a lot of cactus but the trail is still really green and lush here. Apparently, you can swim in it. I did not realize that. I think we're saving our swimming journey for tomorrow morning. We have a secret
spot in mind. Well, we made it to the end, which is the water and there is no way we're not getting in here. Go for it. It's squishy. Well, this is a pretty magical spot. Check this out. It looks like it would be really deep but it's just because the mud is right here so you can't see into it. It's just basically a big mud pool. This side is the US. That side is Mexico. Yeah, so if you touch that rock, that's Oh, that's why people were going over there and touching that. Oh, yeah. It's a long and difficult journey but she made it to Mexico.
Shouldn't they hand me like a Corona or a margarita or something as soon as I get over here? That is really wild that you literally cross that river. It's like 100 ft and then you're in Mexico. Crazy. All right, got to start the long journey back to the USA. I thought I got bit by something. I guess I kind of did. AH, OW. THAT'S lurking in these waters? Pull it out. Pull it. Just pull it. I know but you're balancing on it. Ow. Oh, you left the thing in there. no. Ow. That hurt.
Son of a gun. Molly. Uh, maybe wear some water shoes if you come into this. Yikes. of hurt. Big Bend might be one of the least visited National Parks in the United States but it is very large. It is around 800,000 acres. So it takes up a lot of space. In fact, it is larger than the state of Rhode Island. And if you're a bird or you are really going to love it here because apparently it has more birds than any other National Park in the entire USA. That's crazy cuz I haven't seen any birds yet. Where are they all hiding? We hear them off in the distance but we definitely haven't seen many. Well, this was a pretty freaking awesome start to our time here at the park. This is so freaking magical. Come on. But there's
way more to see. So time to hit the road? Hitting the road. Should I do like a transition? This? Yeah, there you go. Keep it up. You got it. That's it. Are you taking a video? Of course I am. I'm not hearing the clicking anymore. I thought the photo turned out pretty cool. The selfie mode was kind of fun. We usually do all posey like ha. But I'm feeling it, baby. Awesome. Is this not just a really cool spot or what? I feel like I need some roller skates though. Yeah.
You guys, look at this tarantula. We finally found one. Oh, he's terrifying. Oh. Look at him. Oh man, was that tarantula awesome or what? It was so big. way bigger than the ones we have in the hill country. It was like twice the size, man, and yellow-looking. Woo. I also got a phone video of him falling off this wall he was trying to climb. It was kind of sad. I felt bad for him. He seemed like he was a little embarrassed by it. I feel like tarantula don't mess with us because one time we ate a tarantula. It's not that bad. It was not good. No, it tastes like liver. Like fishy liver. But if you want to stay overnight in Big Bend, you have a few options. You can camp, you can bring your RV or there
is one hotel. It is the Chisos Mountains Lodge. That is where we are staying. It's really kind of bare-bones accommodations but what's really fantastic about it is right dead center in the park. Like there's even a bunch of hiking trails that you can do from right here. But their restaurant is closed for innovations and all they have is this food truck and the food really doesn't look very good. So I think we're going to head out to a nearby town and grab something to eat, right? Yes, please. Let's do it.
We came to the town of Marathon, which is just outside of Big Bend, found ourselves a little pizza restaurant to hang out and get a get ourselves some lunch. And of course, a nice cold brewski. It's what the body craves after a long hike. Oh yeah, definitely. So when we were recently in the Faroe Islands, you may remember that I broke my very expensive lens and since then we've actually been shooting a lot more on our GoPro. I've also been editing on my ASUS ProArt P16 laptop and they are actually partnering with us on this adventure in Big Bend. So huge thanks to them. After a day of shooting with my little GoPro, all I do is connect it to the Wi-Fi and it automatically starts uploading all
the footage to the cloud and when it's done, it deletes it from the GoPro so I never have to fiddle with the card. Then I click one button and the video is imported directly into their Story Cue software. So I never have to worry about a single cable and never have to worry about losing my footage. You can even preview 360 footage from your GoPro Max 2 directly in Story Cue. Also, editing is just super smooth on this laptop since it's got a beefy RTX 5090 graphics card. Everything about it is super fast. Importing clips, rendering clip previews, encoding. And I am in love with this little dial that they have on the trackpad. It makes all the little adjustments I have to make so much faster. And of course, the picture is
clear as heck because they have this Lumina Pro OLED screen. The ProArt laptop comes with a 6-month free GoPro subscription as well as a 15% off discount on GoPro cameras. But we are actually pretty much done here and it is starting to rain and we should be able to check in to the lodge pretty soon. So we're heading out. Okay, it's really starting to rain now. I guess that's our sign. One more swig of beer and we're out of here. Well, hello. So, we are officially all checked into our room and yep, this is it. They have a bunch of stuff closed for renovations here. I'm hoping that the rooms will be the next thing that they renovate cuz as you can see it's pretty
dated. But I mean it kind of looks like a horror movie's about to happen. I don't know. It's it's pretty bare bones and everything's very old. The carpet's very dirty. There are a lot of roaches outside trying to get in. There is AC that works and no visible blood stains anywhere. So, that's good news. Just don't bring a black light. Oh. But I guess it's a room in the middle of the park and there's literally hiking trails that you can do from the lodge. So, it's a pretty sweet spot. You might have noticed there is no TV in here and there is no Wi-Fi. So, you did just you and the creepy room and nature.
One of the things that Big Bend is known for is being one of the darkest skies in the lower 48 states. So, pretty awesome opportunity for some long exposure star photography, which I am not all that good at. But you guys might know I've dabbled in it a little bit. What's really cool is that if you look up, you can't really see it on the phone camera, but there is a strip right here. You can see the freaking Milky Way. It's fantastic. You can see it with your eyes. But when you do the long exposure, it really freaking pops. You start to see like all the magentas and the colors and stuff that you see in like all those National Geographic photos. It is pretty cool. We're really trying to catch a
shooting star. We keep seeing them with our eyeballs, but we can't get it on camera yet. You got to have some patience for this though. Every single adjustment you make, you can't really see what the heck you're doing. So, you just got to take the photo and see what it looks like and then adjust. We got up bright and early today took ourselves a little sunrise drive. We made sure to get little coffees last night, so that's helping a little bit. But man, sunrise in Big Bend totally worth it. There's so many hues of blue and layers off in the distance. The sun is starting to cast an orange shadow over on the hills. Oh my gosh, it's so Very magical. I guess sunset has more orangey vibes. Sunrise is more like
purpley blue, it seems. Can you tell we're not sunrise people? We're literally like, "Wow, the sunrise color is different." So, you guys know that yesterday we did the canyon trail that was on the western side of the park. Now we are going to head to the opposite side of the park to the eastern side. And the reason we got up early is because we went ahead to a hot spring and we wanted it all to ourselves. Yes, we met a lovely couple hiking yesterday who said they got there yesterday at around 8:30 9:00 and there wasn't a single other person there. So, that is what we're hoping for today. So, we were able to park at this little turnout, but we hit a road closed sign.
This is the dirt road that you could typically drive down, but I guess you can't right now. It had actually said that the road is closed and the hot springs are closed because there's a bunch of sediment from overflow from the river. However, that notice was posted well over a month ago. Yeah, we're in the midst of the government shutdown. So, I think not many things have been updated in the park. People yesterday said they got in the hot springs and it was totally fine. The only problem is you have to do quite a bit of hiking to get there. Normally it's a half a mile. Today we're doing 5 and 1/2 miles. Oh, yeah. Right on down this way.
But as you can see it's on a dirt road. There's that's the sand dunes. Well, we made it to the official start of the trail to the hot springs and man, the flooding must have been insane here. The water must have just rushed through here and there's just a bunch of debris everywhere, sand covering everything. Don't get me started on the bathroom. That thing must have just been completely flooded. I mean I know the government shutdown, but I mean come on. That is rough. Welcome to Boquillas Hot Spring. Confirmed, this is hot. That is not.
This hot spring here is a 105°. The spring bubbles up into the ruins here and that's because back in the early 1900s this was actually a bathhouse. People would come down here to use the springs for their healing property. Actually, that's been happening for hundreds or maybe thousands of years. But yeah, so this was the basement of the bathhouse. So, there was a whole structure here and people would come down here into the basement and the spring bubbles up from over there. How cool is that? And as you can see, mission accomplished. We're all alone at the hot spring. All alone. No one said you could dance. Oh, I'm dancing, baby.
I make fun of Allison's dancing all the time and you guys in the comments give me a hard time, but I'm just joking. I'm just goofing around. I love her dancing. Sometimes you're joking. Well, it's adorable. Yeah, let's go with that. It's adorable. Did you film me right then? Did you just fall? Oh, I just ate it. Woo, that got my heart going. Please don't get hurt. The edges are very slippery. But this is why you come to Big Bend. It is a holiday weekend and still nobody is here. And we didn't even get here all that early, you guys. Come on.
Wow. Well, that's how deep it is. CHECK THAT OUT. SEE, that's where the healing properties come from. All that mud goo. Hmm, doesn't smell that bad. Usually hot springs smell like sulfur, but these don't have any smell at all. I'm not one of those like bathing in mud type of people. Or am I? Yeah, I guess I am. Woohoo. Mud bath, baby. You know, I am starting to feel rejuvenated. I feel 10 years younger. I don't think you can fix stupid though. You look like a crazy person. I feel pretty crazy. I'm not really into this actually though. I'm going to get washed off. Oh, yeah.
There we go. I know the sun's out, but this feels real good. This is where the hot meets the cold. This is hot. This is very cold. Oh my god, it's really cold. That's way colder than I thought it was going to be. My god, this is the real POLAR PLUNGE. AH, HOT AND COLD AT THE SAME TIME. YEAH. SO, this area here at the trailhead is actually the hot springs historic district. So, in the early 1900s this guy Langford moved out here with his family. Apparently, he was very sickly
and he took 21 days, bathed in the waters, and healed himself. Apparently, 21 days will heal you. Of what? I don't know. Anything, maybe? So, then he ended up building all the facilities out here and he would basically get people to come from far and wide and do his like 21-day healing regimen. But I guess it was pretty bustling out here. There was like a general store and stuff that is now just completely dilapidated. It's crazy. I mean it feels remote now, but it was really remote back then. I cannot They have photos with all these old cars out here. How did they get down here? I feel like our 4x4s would maybe even have trouble.
We just kept driving past where we parked for the hot springs and it takes you kind of close to the Mexican border. There's a like a shop and stuff. But more importantly, we found the wild horses. They're actually at an RV park, but they are just chilling living their best life. Well, they're not like drinking in a beautiful stream or something, but it's still pretty freaking cool. There is actually a border crossing in the park and it is right over there. You go through it and then you can go right across this river and that's Mexico. How crazy is that? You could throw a rock over to Mexico. I mean you could
literally just wade through the water over there. crazy. You have to have your passport in order to cross and do you want to tell them why we're not going to cross into Mexico today? Allison forgot her passport back in the RV. She did and we were supposed to bring it because we were going to go to Mexico. There's actually that town right over there called Boquillas and they have a couple of Mexican restaurants and stuff. I was going to go over to Mexico and get a Corona. It was going to be awesome. You can take yourself. I'm not going by myself, shoot. We'll just have to enjoy it from afar, I guess. We did technically go to Mexico yesterday though. That is true. And now I'm getting an epic view of Mexico.
There it is. Now, this is something I've never really seen before. I'm not sure how this works, but there's a bunch of like Mexican trinkets and a little can where you can put your money in and you can buy stuff here. So, the road system throughout the park is fairly developed and pretty dang nice. Like almost no potholes whatsoever, but they'll take you to most of the main trailheads and lookouts. There are a bunch of dirt road offshoots that are going to lead you deeper into the wilderness and some of them do require a 4x4. So, make sure you check on that. Usually there's like a sign before the trailhead. The time zone in Big Bend is also very tricky because I guess it's right in the middle of
mountain time and central time. So, our phones are literally showing two different times, an hour apart from each other. So, if you make any plans to like do a tour or go kayaking or anything like that, make sure you are looking at central time and not mountain time. On your way outside of Big Bend, you have to stop at this fossil exhibit. It is completely free, completely open air. It's open 24/7 and you can walk in and see all these ancient fossilized remains of all kinds of creatures that existed
all throughout the years. It is fantastic. Most of the stuff they found right here. Is that crazy or what? This is what used to be where Big Bend is. It was completely covered in water. Is that nuts or what? That's why you find so many weird underwater fossils here. Yeah, true. You guys, not only is this skull horrifying, but this creature actually grew eight to be 18 ft. They found one with a fossilized 6-ft fish inside of it. So, a fossil with a 6-ft fossil in it. That's insane. There you go. Yep. That would be you and that would be it and then this would be in here. How do you pronounce this? Zifac [snorts] tinus? I think you nailed it. So, 80 million years ago this would have
been happening on the banks of the river. And today this is happening. Mud bath, baby. I am starting to feel rejuvenated. And they say man is the fiercest predator. I don't know about that, babe. Well, good morning, y'all, from Alpine, Texas. We spent the night just in some random hotel and then got up bright and early because we have a very long drive to get back to the Austin area today. But, before we head out, we had to grab something delicious to eat. This might not look all that delicious if you're not used to it, but this is a kolache. This is like a Texas spin on a Czech dish and it's basically a piece of sausage with a dough wrapped around it.
It's a pig in a blanket. That's what it is. It's like a big old pig in a blanket. But, there's a donut shop in town that sells these and uh it is piping hot and pretty delicious looking. It is such a simple thing. It is bread and a hot dog. This one has cheddar in it and it is bursting with flavor. It is pillowy and soft and warm. They also make a croissant donut and it just looked too good to pass up. Like, check that out. ever encountered a croissant donut. You know what's funny about it? It's very heavy. I think there are a lot of layers inside this thing. Oh, man.
Ooh, that's delicious. Probably not the best way to start your day when you're not used to eating sweets like we are, like we aren't. But, it's got all this flaky, like, caramelized sugar on the top. It's actually like the slightest bit savory. The sweetness comes from the stuff that's on top. Very pillowy, very doughy, dense, and delicious. Those are pretty good descriptors. Yeah.
