The Most Scenic Areas at Big Bend

The Most Scenic Areas at Big Bend, When you enter Big Bend National Park they give you a map and a guide of the most scenic areas to visit in the park. You can visit all these areas in one day by vehicle, they have a loop that travels around the park to each one of these spots. Make sure to go early because this first one draws a crowd.

It is Santa Elena Canyon, an experience of nature that is beyond ones imagination and a photographer’s dream to photograph in the right conditions.

 This narrow canyon is cut by the Rio Grande River. Texas is on the right side of the picture and Mexico on the left. Here the Rio Grande separates the limestone outcrops of the Mesa de Anquila, on the Texas side, from the Sierra Ponce, on the Mexican side. In places, the canyon walls tower 1,500 ft (457 m) above the river. 

The photos do not do the canyon walls justice, if I was standing next to the wall in this photo I would look like a speck of dust.

Santa Elena Canyon is 8 miles (13km) long and 1,500 feet (450 m) deep. In some places the canyon walls are only 30 feet (9 meters) wide. The Rio Grande established its present course on basin-filling sediments that covered the rocks and faults we see exposed today. The river eroded through the surface layers and cut steep-sided canyons in the more resistant Lower Cretaceous limestones.

Today you can see those ancient limestone formations exposed in the canyon walls. A popular way to explore the length of Santa Elena Canyon is on a two or three-day river rafting trip that begins in the town of Lajitas, 

The Most Scenic Areas at Big Bend

Sandra J