If you want to get a decent breakfast when camping out in Big Bend, you can drive in to the town of Terlingua. There are a few restaurants in Terlingua, but not much open for breakfast. La Posada Milagro is open and has good TexMex breakfast food. The dining is all covered patio outside, which is fine if you are in the camping/hiking mindset anyway. I have seen lines out to the parking lot but it wasn’t too busy on this morning. I look forward to breakfast at this place whenever I go out to Big Bend.
Very near the restaurant is the Terlingua ghost town and cemetery. The ghost town consists of the remains of several old stone buildings that were once part of a town built around mercury mining. When mercury was no longer profitable, mostly everyone left I suppose. The ghost town is kind of in the middle of town so it is not such a lonely abandoned place as the name implies. You can walk around the abandoned stone structures and the adjacent cemetery and there are some restaurants, stores, art galleries, and such near by.
It is difficult to photograph any of the ghost town without the more modern buildings (and shacks) of Terlingua in the photo. I worked a few vantage points to get just the old stone ruins and mountains in the background to make it look more like a ghost town. This mainly involved standing back and getting kind of low to keep the modern buildings and cars hidden behind the ruins. You can still see a few other structures in the backgrounds though.
The mountains in the distance are where we camped. There is valley amidst the mountains called the Chisos Basin where there is a large campground, lodges, and a park store. There is a photo in my previous blog of the campground from an overlook that is taken facing back in this direction.
My post processing was to mask out the sky and warm up the landscape to account for the mid-day sun washing out the color and then increase the micro-contrast to enhance the texture of the stones. My exports are not super high-res here to save a little space, but I did want to show the ghost town.
It might be fun to come out here on a moonless night in late summer and shoot the Milky Way above the ruins. Something to consider for next year.
After breakfast I was off to show my daughter Santa Elena Canyon and the border.
Thanks for reading.
Jason Frels 
that looks like a great place to have breakfast. nice job of getting the image of just the ruins. I remember your previous photos of Saint Elena…
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I wouldn’t have even looked at the ghost town but my daughter needed to make a call so I wandered around while she was in the car.
That Santa Elena photo was just a lazy panorama but I wanted to find a place to put it.
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you never know what you’ll doscover when you just wander around…
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Always like the vivid blue skies in your pictures.
Your first picture of the ghost town is my favorite, but I like the mountains in the background of your 2nd picture.
Camping out in the summer to get pics of the Milky Way sounds like a very good idea! I remember another picture you took of stars before which turned out really good.
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Well, all I had were clear blue skies to work with, so I am glad it worked somewhat well. I could do the sky replacement thing, but that really isn’t my way.
It isn’t much fun camping out there in the summer. It doesn’t cool much at night and the ground holds the day’s heat long into the night. But I’ll do stupid things for a photo some times.
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Yes, you don’t need sky replacement. 🙂
Just about anything is worth a photo, right? Just please no posing with dangerous animals!
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I saw a coyote, a big horn sheep, and a bunch of tarantulas. That was about the worst of it on this trip. I was more worried about deer jumping out in front of my car on the way home.
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Yes, deer can be scary! We have to be real careful this time of year.
BUT I could not handle tarantulas, definitely not a bunch! Now you are going to make me feel creepy crawly!
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Well I often see tarantulas 🕷 out there. Usually one at a time. I will try to get a pic next time.
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You may want to start ducking! 😜
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Gee! Too bad that winter is coming and that you won’t be back out there for awhile. Guess I will have to wait for the pic.
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I like how they stacked flat stones against the adobe walls of that one building. I’ve always wondered how comfortable such structures were, to live in. I’ll bet they baked in the summer and froze in the winter.
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Probably. I did alright in a canvas tent ⛺️ though.
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Sounds like you know how to rough it.
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Mercury mining – what could go wrong! I like the way the mountains echo the shape of the ruined building.
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Thanks. There is the remains of some trolley towers and cables on the other side of the park where apparently they mined silver back in the day and transported it down an elevated cable way for several miles.
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