Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute

For our 3rd Big Bend day, I had planned on 2 things. One of those was the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute (CDRI) which is home to the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens.

We arrived at the CDRI after lunch and headed straight into the Powell Vsitor Center to pay. The employee helping us gave us a map and told us what his favorite trails were and which ones we might be interested in.

After leaving the visitor center we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to try to see. The Desert Botanical Garden is to one side of the visitor center and the nature trails are to the opposite side. We headed towards the Desert Botanical Garden but first we made a stop at the Heritage Mining Exhibit.

The mining exhibit was really interesting and had a lot to see. We really enjoyed seeing all the equipment, artifacts, and especially all the ores.

After the mining exhibit, we headed into the Botanical Garden. First we took the trail to the overlook.

Then we made our way to the very back of the garden where the Cactus and Succulent Greenhouse is located. This was one of the things the employee had told us we should be sure not to miss. As the name implies, there were tons of different cacti and succulents to see.

Once we were done in the greenhouse, we made our way back out of the garden. We stopped at the visitor’s center before heading out the other side to the nature trails. We decided that we wanted to head down the trail through Modesta Canyon to the spring.

This loop was supposed to be one of the easier trails but we did not make it all the way to spring. We started down into the canyon and it was easy enough at first. There are rock stairs going down but some are a little steeper than others. As we got further in it was more difficult. We eventually got to a point where it looked like it just dropped off so we headed back up because we weren’t sure exactly where the trail went.

Once we were back to where we started we went halfway up another trail. The full trail leads to Clayton’s Overlook. JT really wanted to go to the overlook but we wanted to make it to the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine so we just went up halfway. The trail was up a hill and much easier. We still had a nice view even though we didn’t go all the way to the overlook.

There was plenty more to explore at the nature center and you could easily spend a whole day here. Another exhibit that I thought was fun was just outside the visitor’s center. Going around half of the building was the Geological Timeline exhibit. The timeline featured different rocks from the different eras. Walking around the Geological Timeline takes you through over 2 billion years and the rock samples are all from the region.

If you’re planning a visit to the Big Bend region, I highly recommend making this one of your stops.

Do you enjoy exploring nature trails?