Terlingua Ghost-Town Big Bend Weekend — West Texas

A converted mercury-mining ghost town on the western edge of Big Bend National Park — adobe ruins, hand-painted Day-of-the-Dead altars in the cemetery, the dome of the night sky bigger than feels safe. Saturday is a sunrise hike into Santa Elena Canyon (1,500-foot Rio Grande walls a stone's throw apart), lunch on a Mexican beach across the river at Boquillas, and an afternoon soak at the Hot Springs Historic District where 105°F mineral water runs into the Rio Grande. Dinner is on the Starlight Theatre porch — Terlingua's restored opera-house-turned-saloon — and a drink afterward with the locals at La Posada Milagro. Decompression on Sunday with a long sit on the chinati overlook of the Chisos Mountains and a coffee at Espresso y Poco Mas.