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The plan was simple.
My sister-in-law, Shanelle, would fly from Indianapolis to El Paso. My spouse, Levi, and I would drive in from Tucson, towing our squaredrop trailer behind us.
From there, we’d caravan 4.5 hours to Big Bend National Park. One of the most remote and least visited parks in the lower 48.
But Texas had other thoughts.
Shanelle’s flight got obliterated by a Midwest snowstorm, so we adjusted. She’d meet us at camp later. No big deal. We pushed on, cruising past dust-choked outposts and desert landscapes that looked straight out of Red Dead Redemption.
Then, West Texas reminded us who was in charge.
Interstate 10 is a wildcard. One minute, it’s wide-open desert bliss. The next, you’re weaving between semi-trailers while getting sandblasted by wind that wants to snap your trailer in half.
Levi checked his mirror and cursed. The wind had bent our steel solar panel mount in half.
Cue emergency detour to a tiny True Value hardware store in Van Horn, Texas, where we patched it up in the parking lot while a freight train rattled by. Across the street, a man in a dusty pickup truck watched us with concern.
“Where you headed?”
“Big Bend,” Levi answered.
The man’s face pinched. “You know how bad the weather is gonna be, right?”
He was on the local emergency management team. We should have listened to him.
Instead, we did what all stubborn travelers do: thanked him, convinced ourselves we were “prepared,” and kept driving.
Wind, Ice, and the Moment We Gave Up
Chisos Basin Campground sits at 5,400 feet, tucked inside the Chisos Mountains. You have to drive an hour from the park entrance just to get there.
By the time we arrived, the sun was sliding behind the mountains. The wind had calmed down, which gave us false hope that maybe things would work out.
They did not.
The second we finished setting up our brand new pop-up gazebo, the wind roared back to life. Not just a spirited gust. Not just “oops, there goes my hat” kind of wind. No. This was a 40–60 mph full-body assault, throwing itself against the fabric walls like a battering ram.
I clung to the gazebo with every ounce of my 5’6″ frame, my shoulder screaming in pain, while Levi scrambled to sink lag bolts into the rocky ground with an impact drill.
To anyone watching, we probably looked like contestants in a deranged survival game show:
Survive the Elements Without Losing Your Tent (or Your Dignity).
The camper vans around us sat smug and unmoving. Meanwhile, we were battling physics, meteorology, and our own dumb decisions.
Eventually, we retreated inside the trailer, listening to the storm shred everything we had just hauled 650 miles.
I’ve endured plenty of bad-weather camping trips. Heat, wind, rain, bugs. I’ve even survived a dust devil that ripped the door off our trailer. But this?
This was unwinnable.
Finally, I spoke the words neither of us wanted to say.
“We can’t stay.”
Packing up camp felt like a defeat in the last round of a championship fight. But what were we proving by sitting inside, waiting for the wind to snap our trailer in half?
Levi found just enough cell signal to book a hotel room two hours away. We threw everything into the trailer and got the hell out.
Escaping in the Dark with Our Pride in Pieces
Driving out of Big Bend in the pitch-black Texas night was surreal.
The emptiness pressed in from all sides. Somewhere between the National Park and Marathon, Texas, we hit a Border Patrol checkpoint that made Arizona’s look like a neighborhood café.
A voice barked, “IMMIGRATION CHECK.”
Two uniformed officers surrounded the Jeep.
“Just the two of you?”
“Yep.”
“Going somewhere warmer?”
“Yeah, Chisos Basin ain’t it,” Levi said.
One of the officers almost smiled. Or maybe the lighting just played tricks on us. Either way, we were waved through. By 11 p.m., we collapsed into a warm hotel bed, already planning how to salvage the trip.
Texas didn’t want us. Maybe New Mexico would.
The Drive to Somewhere Safer
We rolled into Alpine, Texas, well after dark. The hotel room was warm and still, a sharp contrast to the chaos we had left behind. The plan was to meet Shanelle in El Paso the next morning and regroup.
The drive back took us through Marfa, where we stumbled onto the filming location for Giant. The original house was long gone, swallowed by the West Texas dust in the 1980s, but the murals of James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor loomed over the highway like ghosts from another era.
Just outside the village of Valentine, we pulled over to check out Prada Marfa. It’s a designer store that never opens, filled with real Prada handbags and shoes from the 2005 collection.
It was built as an art installation, designed to slowly decay back into the desert. Until then, it remains standing, looking completely out of place yet somehow exactly right.
Texas had thrown enough surprises our way. It was time to find a place that actually wanted us there.
New Mexico was calling.
The Land of Enchantment and a Second Chance
And New Mexico didn’t fight us.
That was the first difference. No brutal wind, no impossible terrain, no sense that the land itself was personally offended by our presence.
After Texas had chewed us up and spit us out, New Mexico just let us be. We decided to make Las Cruces our new base of adventure.
From there, we started with White Sands National Park, a place that usually looks like rolling dunes of sugar but had been transformed into something even more surreal. A snowstorm had rolled through, covering the gypsum in a layer of white on white.
I’d normally kick off my shoes and marvel at how the sand never gets hot, but this time? Barefoot wandering was out of the question unless I wanted to lose a few toes.
Instead, we drove Dunes Drive, letting the scenery mend our Big Bend-broken hearts.
Not far from Alamogordo, we found Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, where rocky hills hold more than 21,000 carvings left by the Jornada Mogollon people over a thousand years ago.
The trail was simple but rewarding, winding through volcanic rock etched with ancient spirals, animal figures, and mysterious faces.
We followed the path as snow crunched under our boots, stopping every few feet to admire another petroglyph.
There’s something about standing in the middle of the desert, surrounded by art that predates your entire understanding of history, that makes you feel small in the best way possible.
From there, we moved on to Rockhound State Park, a place that does exactly what the name suggests. Most parks have signs telling you to leave rocks where you found them. This one practically begs you to take them home.
We climbed steep terrain like modern-day desert prospectors, scanning for jasper, geodes, and anything else that caught the sunlight just right.
Every few minutes, one of us would yell, “Look at this one!” like we’d struck gold. My favorite find was a shiny chunk of black rock that might be obsidian. Or maybe it’s just another rock. I don’t know, I’m not a rock doctor.
After a few hours of pretending we knew anything about minerals, we were starving.
That’s how we ended up in Hatch, standing outside Sparky’s, a restaurant with a reputation for the best green chile cheeseburgers in New Mexico.
We walked in windburned, half-frozen, and starving. Within minutes, we were sitting at a table, inhaling burgers that had the perfect balance of heat and cheesy perfection.
The kind of food that makes you forget about bad weather and broken plans.
By the time we left, I realized something.
This trip hadn’t gone the way we wanted it to, but it had taken us exactly where we needed to go.
The Best Travel Stories Never Go as Planned
The American Southwest has a way of reminding you who’s in charge.
Plans are just suggestions.
We thought we’d camp under Texas stars, drink coffee with sunrise views, and hike Big Bend’s dramatic landscapes. Instead, we got slapped by a winter storm, had a showdown with the wind, and escaped under the cover of darkness.
And honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Because the best travel stories aren’t about the moments that go right. They’re about the moments that go wrong and what you do with them.
So next time the path you planned vanishes beneath your feet, what will you do?
Fight it? Or follow it?
Still Here? You Must Be the Human Equivalent of Well-Seasoned Cast Iron Pan.
Most people tap out early like tourists who underestimate Arizona heat. But not you. You’re built different. So why not pull up a camping chair with us on Substack?
