Which was 29.5 miles away.
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| Yep, that's right |
The only available showers for campers are located at the Rio Grande Village campsite. For $2.00 in quarters you can take a 5-minute shower and they're open 24-hours a day.
We originally weren't planning on taking showers; we had brought washcloths and towels to sponge off in the bathroom using the sink. However we were covered in sunscreen and bug spray, had a ton of time to kill, and wanted to take a drive to see more of the park anyway, so why not?
By the way, if that Google satellite photo above looks like the surface of some other planet to you, you'll be interested to know that Big Bend was one of the locations used by NASA as a moon substitute to train astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission. Per a quote on the Big Bend Book Store webpage:
"[T]he astronauts were brought along in two separate groups... through the field areas on April 2-3, and April 15-16, 1964. The trip continued the basic geology study by requiring interpretation and mapping of well-exposed structural and stratigraphic relationships. Also included was an introduction to volcanic rocks along the Rio Grande River west of Big Bend National Park... On the first day they mapped two folded and faulted structures on aerial photos. On the second day there were four stops, two at road cuts of layered volcanic lavas and ash flows, a third at Bee Mountain to study an igneous intrusion, and a fourth at Santa Elena Canyon to study a large fault scarp."
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| But it's a dry heat |
