West Texas & the Panhandle.

The Texas of cowboys and ranches, big skies and open spaces stretches across the western half of the state, from the edge of the Hill Country to El Paso and from the Panhandle to the tip of Big Bend National Park.

Higher and drier than the rest of the state, the region satisfies the yearning to see the Old West yet surprises most visitors who go expecting only cactus and tumbleweeds. Behold, vineyards thrive in the sun-drenched Panhandle, and its flat plains suddenly give way to a deep red-rock chasm called Palo Duro Canyon. While West Texas, indeed, is a vast desert, mountain ranges crisscross it, with 90 peaks standing more than a mile high and eight of them 8,000 footers.

This section covers a wide area, from the Panhandle's two major cities of Amarillo and Lubbock to the rugged wilderness of Big Bend on the Rio Grande and the multicultural metropolitan area of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. The distances between the Panhandle and the West Texas sites are too great to include both areas in one trip. Concentrate on one area at a time. When planning to see Big Bend and/or the Davis Mountains, schedule a long weekend for the trip because Big Bend is slightly more than 200 miles from the nearest major airport and about 330 miles from El Paso.

Area Information Sources

* Alpine Chamber of Commerce/Big Bend Area Travel Association, [telephone] 800-561-3735, www.alpinetexas. com.

* Amarillo Convention & Visitor Council, [telephone] 800-692-1338, www.amarillo-cvb.org.

* Lubbock Convention & Tourism Bureau, [telephone] 800-692-4035, www.lubbocklegends.org.