West Texas Day Trips for Older Adults
West Texas has a way of surprising people. The landscape that looks flat and featureless from the highway turns out to be full of things worth slowing down for: ancient dunes, spring-fed pools in the middle of the desert, frontier forts frozen in time, and night skies so clear they stop you cold. Midland sits right in the middle of all of it.
Here are five day trips that prove the Permian Basin is a better starting point than most people realize.
Monahans Sandhills State Park
About an hour west of Midland, Monahans Sandhills State Park looks like something transplanted from another continent. Golden dunes roll across the landscape as far as you can see, shaped and reshaped by West Texas wind. You can walk them at your own pace, or just pull up a spot and watch the light change. At sunrise or sunset, the color across those dunes is genuinely hard to believe. It is one of the most beautiful places in Texas that most Texans have never been.
Big Spring State Park
Roughly an hour northeast, Big Spring State Park sits atop a mesa with sweeping views of the surrounding desert. The paved loop drive through the park is worth doing even if you never get out of the car, though the shaded picnic areas and walking paths make a good case for lingering. It is a calm, unhurried outing that rewards a slow morning.
Balmorhea State Park
Two hours west lies one of the genuine surprises of the Trans-Pecos: Balmorhea State Park, home to a vast, crystal-clear spring-fed pool that produces millions of gallons of water every single day, surrounded on all sides by open desert. It should not exist, and yet there it is. Even if swimming is not on the agenda, the drive through the desert to get there earns its keep, and the setting around the spring is unlike anything else in the region.
Fort Davis National Historic Site
About two and a half hours southwest, Fort Davis National Historic Site is one of the best-preserved frontier forts in the American West. The stone buildings, the open parade grounds, the quiet of the surrounding mountains: it all adds up to a place that feels genuinely historic rather than reconstructed. Guided tours are available, and the town of Fort Davis just outside the gates is worth a lunch stop.
McDonald Observatory
A short drive from Fort Davis, McDonald Observatory sits high in the Davis Mountains under some of the darkest skies in the continental United States. Daytime visitors can tour the facilities and catch a solar viewing program. Come back on an evening when a star party is scheduled and the experience is something else entirely: the kind of night sky that makes you understand why people built observatories out here in the first place.
Getting Out from Manor Park
Manor Park's transportation services make it easy for residents to get out and explore without the logistics of driving. Whether heading out with family or as part of a group, there is more to discover within a couple of hours of Midland than most people expect. For closer-to-home ideas, the Midland parks guide on the Manor Park website is a good place to start.
To learn more about life at Manor Park, reach out to the team.