Between here and San Antonio

[Bruce Schultz]

Sorry to hijack the thread.
Guadalupe National Park north of Van Horn is quite remote with some interesting seldom-visited gypsum sand dunes on the west side of the mountains in the flats. But beware of the high winds that hit the area. There's a reason why there's continuous wind turbines about 40 miles along the ridges from Van Horn to the park.

[Bruce Watson]

Bruce,
Why is Big Bend your least fav? I have to admit, I've been there so many times I don't need to return but I'm curious what turned you off about it?

That's sort of like trying to explain your least favorite color.

Probably my dislike for Big Bend NP is that there's so little there there. It's not quite a desert, not quite enough rain to grow anything interesting, so it's a scrub land. I also had scale problems with it. Nothing really big, nothing really small, but a huge amount of mid scale stuff that didn't feel right to me, like it was trying to be something it's not. It basically couldn't grab my attention. I've been to most of the national parks, and BB is the only one that I couldn't make any kind of connection to. "Nothing to see here, move along."

That said, BBNP is unique. I don't know of anything else like it in the national park system, and I've been to most of the parks / monuments. And the fact that I don't connect to it doesn't mean that anyone else will have that trouble.

The OP asked for sights more or less along his route. I'm just saying that I think there's a lot of interesting things for him to see and/or shoot, and BBNP is at the bottom of that list, for me.

[Alan Curtis]

John
If you take the southern route, I recommend The Organ Mountain area east of Las Cruces, White Sands and the Sacramento Mountains east of Alamorgordo. There are some very nice aspen groves near Cloudcroft. This area might be a welcome temperature relief if your trip is in the summer. White Sands should not be missed.

[John Jarosz]

The south-west is an extremely target rich environment for most LFers.

True. But distances are very misleading in Texas. Things are very far apart there and there is usually nothing in between. Realistically plan your driving schedule. If you are not on the interstate it seems to take longer to get places than you expect.

While Big Bend NP is very cool, I found the photographic opportunities to be uninspiring. And I'm someone who likes minimalistic landscapes. If you do go, hope for skies that give you direct sun. When it's fully clouded over (what I got) it's not really worth the trip. Direct sunlight could help a lot.

And BBNP is close to nothing else. Unless you want to buy bottled water or cans of pop, there's really nothing where you can re-supply. Bring everything you think you'll need.

And did I mention about the large distances between locales that have civilization?

Two lane roads: Texas is unique in my experience that has 75MPH speed limits on narrow two lane roads that seem to carry every open body dump truck ever made. And they really do go 75-80 MPH on those roads.

"in a few months" will make it July or August. It gets unspeakably hot in BBNP. So hot that many of the services in the park are shut down then because no one goes there in the heat of summer. BBNP is much better in March or April.

[John Kasaian]

Thanks, all! It seems like this will need a dedicated photo trip