Thanksgiving in the middle of nowhere

We wanted Thanksgiving to be different this year. Very different. I didn't want to cook, we were not expecting guests, so we took a long weekend, rented a car and drove ten and a half hours north west, across Texas.
It was a long stretch of road, not much in between but grass, bushes and once in a while a little town until we reached our destination. Welcome to Big Bend National Park, in the middle of nowhere :)

Our motel was outside the park, in Alpine, about 100 miles from it. We had three days to explore and the park itself is huge, so we divided the area by three. Three days = three different areas.
The first one would be the Chisos Mountain area, the second Santa Elena Canyon and the third and last one would take us to the Rio Grande Village.

Thanksgiving day, Big Bend part 1 - Chisos Mountains
The Chisos Mountain area is the southernmost mountain range in the United States and the entire region is located within Big Bend National Park. It is the greenest part of Big Bend with Emory Peak being the highest mountain with over 7,800 feet.
We arrived around noon, a little later than expected. It took about 90 minutes from Alpine to the park entrance. We stopped at the visitor information for a map and picked our trail.
The window trail sounded like an easy one to start with.

 

  

We took our time, looking around and enjoying mother nature

 

While hiking we met our friends and my husband's colleagues. They spend every Thanksgiving here, we knew that, but we didn't think we would meet them. We are talking about a park here, a park as big as the state of Rhode Island. But now that we had met, we decided to spend the rest of the day together. It is much nicer in company of friends anyways.

 

The end of the window trail is, you probably guessed it, a window.  From there you see the park - if you dare to walk on slippery stones.Slippery as in not wet but shiny and slippery :)

after hiking the trail in too much sun, a cold drink was in order.

Looks good, doesn't it?
By now we had walked up an appetite, and luckily we were in the right spot. The Chisos Mountain restaurant was open. To our surprise they offered a Thanksgiving buffet, turkey included :) So, we hadn't escaped the turkey dinner after all, but at least I didn't cook it.