West Texas travels - part 1
Marfa, McDonald and Beyond
This is the wonderful trip John planned for me for my
birthday (6 months ago) and only revealed in early July. When he had the idea
in February, the first time the tickets were available to the special viewing
at the 107” telescope at McDonald was August 21. So that became the central
event around which the trip was built.
We left on Monday and started the drive west. We stopped
for lunch in Mason, TX – a quaint little town with a population of 2,104. The
town’s claim to fame is that the largest blue topaz found in the US was
discovered there. But of course that museum was closed on Mondays. (We
should’ve sensed a theme…) We had lunch and looked around a bit, added a little
gas to the tank, and got back on the road. (114 miles)
Turns out Mason was exactly half-way to our first planned
vacation destination, the Caverns of Sonora, in Sonora, TX (114 miles). The caverns are a National Natural Landmark.
The cave was warm and muggy (98% humidity), and there were about 360 steps to
climb (up and down) throughout the tour, which meanders for almost 2 hours over
2 miles of caves. The tours here are a
lot less practiced and formal than the tours at Luray – partly because it’s not
a National Park Service site. No uniforms – Bill, our guide, wore a t-shirt and
jeans. There were exactly 3 people working there that day, so they were
alternating tours. The caves are amazing; formed by gas, there are very
different formations here, including helictites that stick out at odd angles
from the walls or the ceilings. The most famous one at Sonora, which formed as
the shape of a butterfly, was vandalized by someone on a tour in 2006.
(Bill told us they think they’ve caught the person, and really want him to
bring back the piece that he took!) In
Texas, it’s a jailable offense to vandalize caves and cave formations, so the
thief is in trouble either way.
We had some ice cream (had to recover from the heat of
the cave!) and headed further west. If you’re counting the miles we’ve driven
and thinking about our gas mileage, you may understand the mild panic we were beginning
to feel as we got closer to Fort Stockton. We were now getting into the higher
elevations (and going up and down mountains), so we pretty much made it to the
gas station on fumes! (141 miles)
On our drive west from Austin, particularly on Route 29,
we crossed a lot of creeks. They were, with one or two exceptions, all bone
dry. And had been for some time. Lesson
#1: Just because it’s called a “creek” doesn’t mean there’s any water there.
From Fort Stockton, we went south to Alpine, in search of
dinner. There’s one really nice restaurant in Alpine, called Reata.
Unfortunately, Reata was closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for renovations.
Sigh. So we quickly looked up another
restaurant, but we found it at 8:15 and they were closing at 8:30. Sigh. Where
did we eat dinner, on our first night of vacation? Subway. Well, it was food. And we didn’t want to wait
til we got to Marfa to eat, fearing that everything would be closed. (67 miles)
Turns out, we were smart not to wait for Marfa for dinner…
we were right, everything was closed! We checked in to the El Paisano Hotel, which
is where Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean (and the whole crew) stayed when they
were filming “Giant.” It’s charming.
John got us a suite facing the courtyard and fountain. The room bizarrely had
two levels – the kitchen and sofa on one level, and the bed and bathroom up 2
brick steps on a higher level platform (that creaked like crazy). The accents in the room were interesting,
including a small stained glass triangle window with a fleur de lis above the
bathroom door – which was also ringed in bricks. We had two sets of French doors looking out
over the patio. It was really lovely. Fortunately the hotel has (weak) wireless
access – lesson #2: cell phone service is awful out there. (26 miles)
When I went to unpack my toiletries, I noticed that
everything was a little wet and smelled minty. What do you know? My small
bottle of mouthwash – the only thing not in an additional plastic bag – had
opened and leaked out all over everything. Fortunately it was clear, not
green…but everything had to be taken out of the bag and wiped off. I’m just lucky my library book didn’t get a
minty makeover!
Total mileage day 1: 463 miles (plus a few extra driving
around Alpine, looking for dinner).
Total time: 11 hours
Day 2 – Big Bend
We slept late and lounged around for a while, and then
decided to go find breakfast. Here’s where we learned lesson # 3: Marfa is only
open on the weekends. Everything we tried, including places that had been
highly recommended, was closed on M-T-W.
We finally found a little hole-in-the-wall place (Alice’s Restaurant)
serving breakfast burritos. We weren’t
the only people in the place -- two Border Patrol guys were enjoying their
breakfast, so we figured it had to be good.
We thought we’d have to choose between going to the art
museums in Marfa and going to Big Bend, but with lesson #3 in full effect, the
decision was made for us. Big Bend, here we come! We packed up our gear and set off. First stop, gas and lunch in Marathon. We
bought burgers at the gas station grill. (I eat at Rudy’s all the time, so why
should eating lunch from a gas station bother me?) We took it to go and set off
for the park. (56 miles to Marathon)
Basically, from Marathon, you drive straight south to Big
Bend. It’s very long and flat, but the mountains in the distance are gorgeous.
I had no idea that there were big mountain ranges like this in Texas! It really
doesn’t look like what people imagine west Texas to look like – or what you see
in the movies -- with big saguaro cactus, dry earth and rolling tumbleweeds. There
were lots of little cacti, and low scrub brush as far as the eye could see. And
it was actually GREEN! (40 miles to Big Bend)
There was nobody on the road with us for most of the trip
– not just to Big Bend, but in general – I think we were passed once on the
highway on Monday, and only saw one other car on the way to Big Bend. Halfway
to the park, there’s a Border Patrol check point, with lots of cameras
recording who comes and goes, but we didn’t have to stop.
When we got to the park, it also seemed deserted. The
entry gate was unmanned, with a sign to pay for your park pass at one of the
three visitor stations. The first visitor station, right inside the gate, was
closed for lunch (it was 1:45, and they were reopening at 2pm, but we didn’t
want to wait). So we drove on to the
next station, Panther Junction, which is roughly in the center of the park,
about 26 miles in. The hills started getting steeper, and the vegetation was
more desert-like. The rock formations were amazing. We talked to the Park
Rangers at Panther, ate our burgers, and decided to head for Chisos Basin.
[There was a teeny
bit of cell service at the park, so I got a call back from Cochineal restaurant
in Marfa, offering us a dinner reservation time of 8:15pm. This turned out to
be perfect – if it had been earlier, I don’t think we would’ve made it back in
time.]
The most famous pictures you see of Big Bend are of Casa
Grande Mountain, and are usually taken from Chisos Basin (9 miles into the
park). We went on one of the shorter
hikes into the basin area, and caught sight of a roadrunner, who walked ahead
of us just fast enough that we didn’t get very good pictures. Sadly, he did not
say “meep meep.” We took lots of pictures at the basin, and then turned around.
[96 miles back to Marfa]
We had to stop at the Border Patrol station (briefly) on
the way back. The two officers came out and checked the car and asked, “Just
the two of you in the car?” Yes, sir. “And you’re both US Citizens?” Yes, sir!
“Have a nice day!” I guess we don’t look
like we’re smuggling anything (or anyone). ;)
When we got back to Marfa, the ground was wet - it rains
in west Texas, too! We had about an hour to rest, and then we got dressed and
went to dinner. We had time for a drink in the hotel bar, which was nice. The
food looked good – it had to be, considering they had a mostly captive audience
of hotel guests who couldn’t get food anywhere else nearby! As we left to walk the four blocks to dinner,
it started raining again. I stood under an awning while my chivalrous man ran
back to get the car. So John was a little damp by the time we got to dinner,
poor guy. Dinner at Cochineal was
excellent… I understand why the reservations are so hard to come by. For our appetizers, John had arancini (fried
balls of risotto) and I had fried artichoke hearts with garlic aioli. They were
both wonderful. There was a LOT of garlic in mine! Then we both had chilaquiles with pork for
dinner. We probably could’ve split one,
but it sounded SO good, and it’s a house specialty. We ate so much, we declined dessert!
At dinner I finally got to give John a present that I had
been hiding for a month… one that I had hoped to be able to give him for Xmas,
or his birthday, or any other occasion where we’d see his family up in
Richardson, but that was not to be. You see, it takes a lot of time to get the
right parts to repair a 100+ year-old pocket watch. When we were first dating, he showed me this
family heirloom (in pieces, missing its glass, etc.), stowed in a plastic bag
in his office closet. It was engraved to his great-grandfather in 1906! I knew
from the minute he showed it to me that I was going to “steal” it and get it
fixed for him. I snuck upstairs one afternoon last December and took it, and
dropped it off at the jeweler that week, but it wasn’t ready until mid-July.
Well, the trip seemed like the perfect time to give it to him, and he loved it.
It needs a longer chain so he can wear it more often.
We went back to the hotel and crashed. It was a loooong
day!
Total mileage, day 2: 270 miles
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