Your post brings back fond memories of the trip Justin and I took to
Big Bend NP in October 2001. We spent a week or so there, camping in Rio Grande Village (in a rented pop-up camper). We left vowing we would definitely return someday. We haven't made it back, yet, but definitely will... everything you mentioned we checked out, and then some -- we also hiked to The Window in the Basin, hiked the Santa Elena Canyon trails, and so much more that was memorable and fun. Most of all, we want to return with decent cameras. Well, Justin at least had a decent camera back then, but I had a low resolution camera and want to return to properly capture my memories in photographs that can actually be displayed as nice prints.