On our way to Big Bend

After getting picked up from the side of the highway by the tow truck and another truck for us extra passengers, we dropped off the truck at a mechanic's place in the middle of the night, and found a hotel that had some space. Fort Stockton is the biggest city in the area and has an oddly high number of hotels, used for housing workers that head out to the west Texas oil fields. We eventually got to sleep around 2:30am. Dave got up early to try to see about getting the truck fixed. The Ford dealership was booked solid, but another mechanic was able to help right away and we were on the road by late morning. We had a few hours between Fort Stockton and Big Bend through beautiful country on a beautiful day. A nice thing about arriving half a day later to Big Bend than we had originally intended (we were going to arrive in the middle of the night before) was that we arrived in day light and everything was fun to see. We talked with the rangers at Panther Junction to figure out what we should do. It turned out that there wasn't much/any water available on the Outer Loop, a backpacking trip, that we were hoping to do, so we instead were able to find a walk-up camp site at Chisos Basin to car camp at and do day trips from. We had come as early as we could so that we could get a walk up site before all of the spring break could arrive. It worked out! Pictures from this part of the journey are below.

Big Bend - To Big Bend, Fort Stockton, and campsite