I don't want to say the road from Presidio to Marfa has only one landmark — there are a few historic markers at ranch gates, and the Chinati Mountains are close enough to the west to count off the peaks as you pass them (or signs for them) — but, there's only one obvious stop for a cyclist, Shafter.

It's an old silver mining town with the ruins of several stone buildings from an old mining operation. There are also a few currently occupied houses and a Catholic church, where we got water from a spigot another cycle tourist told me about three years prior.

Ojinaga is a pleasant border town and seems even less touristed than Acuña, despite the Big Bend Country being a pretty touristed region. Just across the border is Presidio, Texas, which is also pleasant enough and pretty cheap.

We actually stayed one night in Presidio and one in Ojinaga. The "river road" (FM 170) through Big Bend Ranch really wiped us out more than we thought. A lot of that was poor planning water-wise (long story), but the result was we peddled into Presidio feeling overwhelmed. Even though it was just midday, we didn't want the small hassle of crossing the border; plus we decided we needed a place with good internet do some proper planning, so we stayed on the American side. The next day, we were still feeling beat, but we thought we could at least take the effort to cross the border, both to save some money and to get a change of scenery.

On our last day in Big Bend, we packed up our site at Juniper Flats and headed down for one more breakfast at the Chisos Mountains Lodge. Then we set about getting back to our bikes. The plan was to hike down to "The Window", a steep drop-off at the end of a narrow canyon that drains the Chisos Basin, on a short, rather popular trail and then take that trail's less popular continuation, the Oak Spring Trail. From there, we'd follow take a dirt road back to Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive and hitchhike a few miles back to our bikes. Then we'd re-cover those same miles on our bikes before heading out of park and on to Terlingua, or maybe Lajitas if we made good time. (Spoiler: we did not.)

Our first delay came at Oak Spring. We'd packed just enough water and were considering a top-off there, and regardless I wanted too see the spring. But the trail doesn't really take you to the spring; it stops at the top of steep bank, from which you can see, down in the mostly dry wash, a patch of dense vegetation (including the eponymous oaks) indicating the presence of a spring, plus a storage tank indicating that the park takes some (most?) of the spring's production. Paige was patient while I insisted on snaking my way through the thorny plants to check out the vegetated area, but I didn't find anything more then some wet patches of grass. You could likely recover water from in an emergency (dig a hole), but it was no place for a discretionary top-off. So we moved on.

But, just a little ways downstream, the gravel road crossed the same wash, and here there was water — enough to easily fill up our bottles. There was also a trail sign for another water feature: Cattail Falls. We'd heard of it once before — a somewhat reliable waterfall in the middle of the desert. But I was never quite sure where it was and assumed it wasn't very accessible from any of the Chisos trails. If it was, it'd be on the map, right?

I'm now convinced that this fairly short spur — definitely accessible on a round-trip day hike from the Basin and even more convenient to the Ross Maxwell Drive — is intentionally omitted from the main Chisos trail maps to protect the falls from over-visitation... and it seems to be working. On a day when we say a ton of people (granted, many were in the same large group) at the Window, we only saw one other couple at Cattail Falls.

We were glad to see one more site in the park, but it meant there was no way we'd make it to Lajitas or even to the Terlingua ghost town without pushing sunset. We set our sights on one of the first campgrounds we'd come to in Study Butte. Luckily we got a hitch quickly and were able to make it to the campground before dark.

The Lost Mine Trail might be the most spectacular trail per unit effort in the Chisos. However, it doesn't connect to the rest of the Chisos trail network; instead it's trailhead is a mile or so up the road connecting the Basin to the rest of the park. We had considered hitching, but ended up walking the road both to and from the trail, adding an extra two miles to the 4.8 mile round-trip. Still, it was a pretty relaxed day. Other than this trail, all we did was eat a big breakfast, have a couple beers, and visit the park's hot spring (by car, thanks to friend from Terlingua)!