Spent the last 3 days in Marathon, TX. It is a town of 400 people. The closest town to Big Bend National Park. It was a lazy couple of days, but still included some interesting stuff.
The campground that we stayed at had a nice courtyard with a water fountain. Due to the cold snap it was all frozen. It was cool at night because they had colored lights in it.
One evening we went to the distillery in town. We ended up talking to a local couple for a couple hours. Turns out the woman had written a book and was meeting a film director at the distillery to talk about a contract to turn her book into a movie. She gave us a copy of the book. I look forward to reading it. It was interesting talking about the area and they gave us a food recommendation for the town of Alpine where we were planning to go. It’s one thing we like about going to distilleries and breweries is we learn about the local area and meet different people.
We also went to the local BBQ place. It was in an old gas station, so had cool architecture to it. The BBQ was good but I REALLY enjoyed the peach cobbler. So much so, another night we went just for the cobbler.
We did walk around the town and up to the schools. They have all grades with 4-5 students per grade. They had a sports field, but I wonder how they are able to field any type of team. We saw several different historical buildings of the town, the first school house and the Gage Hotel. When we did walk to town we saw this interesting Street Sign. It was on a side street and we have no idea what it means.
We ventured into Alpine the last day we were there. We needed to do some wash as the laundry at the campgrounds pipes froze the night it was 18 degrees. After the wash, we hiked to “the desk” at Sul Ross University. It was a nice rocky trail, one of my favorite types, with wide open views. Dave estimated we could probably see about 15 miles.
The story of the desk is that in 1981 three Sul Ross students decided they needed a quiet place away from the dorm to study. Together they carried a desk up Hancock Hill. Soon they were spending hours up on the hill studying and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. One day, one of them left a notebook in one of the desk drawers and when he checked it later, someone had written in it. He replied and soon the tradition of a notebook associated with The Desk was born. Now people just sign the desk and the original notebook is in the archives of the Big Bend in the Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library.
Boy, this would be a really nice office
After the hike we went to the Cow Dog, the place the people from the distillery recommended. They sell hot dogs only with various kinds of toppings. Dave had the Mexican and I had the El Pastor. They were very yummy. They also had an open mike, so there were some poeple playing music. We then found a local shop that had ice cream and other treats and had a cone. Real nice day in Alpine, TX.
Today we moved to Big Bend National Park. Service will be spotty or only at the visitor centers, so will post when I can.
Till next time.
So very cool! Loving the adventure
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