Big Bend National Park consists of the Rio Grande River, the Chihuahuan desert and the Chisos mountains. There are many good hiking paths in this park with various degrees of difficulty. We did the Grapevine Hills trail to climb up to see the Balanced Rock. We also did the Santa Elena Canyon trail to see where the canyon meets the river. The end of this trail is one of the narrowest places in the seven mile long Santa Elena Canyon. It has a great echo. We hiked a short way on the Lost Mine Trail to see the difference in the environment as the terrain changed from desert to mountain. We also hiked the Burro Mesa Pouroff trail which is trail to a box canyon where you can see a dry waterfall. During heavy periods of rain, this pouroff may become active. Since they have not had rain since July, there was not a drop of water in site at the pouroff. Even the Rio Grande was very low and dry at some places. We would not have been able to walk to the end of the Santa Elean Canyon had the river been high.