We entered Big Bend National Park from the Terlingua side on February 10. This was my third trip to Big Bend after my first bike trip and the road trip Paige and I took after finishing the AT. Those trips had both focused on the Chisos Mountains; neither of us had seen the park's co-headliner, Santa Elena Canyon, except from a viewpoint miles away in the Chisos. This time, we made it a priority.

The canyon is reachable by paved road, but loops are always preferable to long out-and-backs, so we traveled one way on the unpaved Old Maverick Road. At first I thought we'd made a huge mistake; it was probably less than a mile before the washboards rattled a bolt loose from the hardware I used to convert my backpack into a pannier. I never found the bolt, but I had spares in a slightly different size with matching nuts. I spent the next couple hours bracing for my whole bike to rattle apart, but there were no more issues.

The Old Maverick Road is scenic enough — the canyon and the limestone wall it emerges from come into view pretty quickly —, but the road has virtually no shade. We were thankful for Luna's Jacal, an old dwelling preserved as a historical exhibit which we crawled inside for lunch.

From the canyon, our plan was to take the paved Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive to Cottonwood Campground, which is small and first-come-first-served, so we were crossing our fingers. Luckily, a hiker at the canyon saw our bikes parked at the trailhead, saw us later, and somehow pegged us for the bike tourists. We struck up a conversation, and it turned out he'd done the Southern Tier a few years prior. He said he was camping at Cottonwood and said we could share his site if the campground filled up. When we arrived, it was indeed full, so we were thankful. It was good to have some company and chat about bike tours and other such adventures over dinner.