Day Two: Off to west Texas
We woke up and pet the host cats at Fiddlers Inn in Carlsbad, NM, and took a short walk to Blue House Bakery and Cafe. The Inn had given us a breakfast voucher, and we were excited to try a local bakery. Unfortunately, I made bad choices (I was still learning about the heat of NM food), but so many of their baked goods looked amazing.
Then we loaded up and headed south, because we had a date with a National Park!
On the way to Big Bend National Park, we found Marathon, Texas. It’s a cute tiny town with a French Grocer that was home to the most eager greeter I’ve ever encountered. He was a Boston terrier named Otis, and we enjoyed a game of tug while my husband purchased our sandwiches for a picnic along the highway.
We noted in the car that the health department laws in west Texas are quite different than where I come from.
We also noted a great deal of border patrol activity and witnessed … something. Let’s just say guns were drawn. We knew we definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Big Bend National Park
The road to Big Bend National Park and the drive within the park to facilities was also long. This might not be the best roadtrip for people with bad backs or small children with short attention spans.
The park features desert mountain views, lots of driving and lots of hiking opportunities. We opted for the St. Elena Canyon hike, which is a fairly difficult, but short hike. It’s definitely not handicap accessible, and there are some tight spaces and a couple steep grades with difficult footing. No extra equipment required, but water is necessary out there.
The St. Elena Canyon is carved by the Rio Grande, which is on the border with Mexico. The hike takes you along the U.S. side of the shallow river, while park rangers and tourists kayak along the water. The trail ends at a canyon dead end, though several more prepared hikers continued hiking up the river. The Mexican side of the canyon was sheer cliffs, so there wasn’t much worry about American tourists escaping south.
After the hike we drove around the west side of the park and did not make it to the areas on the east side of the park because of obligations later in the week. We left a great deal of the park for a later visit, but we did enough to add some stamps to our National Park Passport book and to justify scratching another park off our National Park scratch-off map.
If you haven’t caught on, my husband and I are nerds for the National Parks.
Terlingua, Texas
We headed up to Terlingua, Texas for dinner and had another “not in Kansas anymore” moment as we arrived in this west-Texas Oz-land.
As I understand it Terlingua was a company town that became a ghost town and then got discovered by tourists. It is home to under 100 people but hosts an annual chili contest that draws 10,000 people. Thus, the town has more camp and RV sites than one might imagine – many of them decorated and awaiting the return of the chili festival, giving the town a peculiar vibe – like that of a cluttered living room the day after a party.
It’s said to be a ghost town, but it’s lively enough that I’ve declared it a zombie town.
Terlingua is dotted with art shops and restaurants, with a steady flow of visitors looking for services not available in the park. We arrived at a highly-rated restaurant that had a 90-minute wait thanks to tour busses arriving just before us. We opted instead for La Kiva, which hit the spot with fried catfish and peach cobbler. The entrance to the place was a descent into the underground and the decor felt cavelike, rustic and charming. The bar looked like it could be a lot of fun, if we weren’t getting up early the next morning.
Our reservations were at Terlingua Ranch Lodge Resort, which was about half an hour outside of Terlingua at the end of a long dirt road. I accused my husband of luring me to my demise as we passed our dozenth Gadsden flag. There were van lifers, RV lifers, people who appeared to be homesteading and even weekend biker camp sites. I admire people who give it a go off the grid like this, even though my lack of cell phone service did give me a ping of anxiety from time to time.
The resort host greeted us, showed us to our cabin and informed us of our wifi info (THANK GOD) and dining option: the Bad Rabbit Cafe, where I started the next day with nearly perfect biscuits and gravy.
But I get ahead of myself.
One of the primary reasons for our visit was the fact that this area is an International Dark Sky site. I’ve longed to return to one ever since our first visit to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We’ve tried a couple other times to hit dark sky sites, but we tend to visit them on rainy nights, as was the case with this particular site.
Since it was dark and rainy with no cell service and no television, I thought I’d have to resort to writing this travel log in real time. The good news, though, was that the Lodge wifi was impressive enough that we were able to stream a couple shows in our DVR backlog.
I still would rather have watched the Milky Way, spotted constellations and been abducted by a UFO.
Up Next: Day Three: Terlingua to Carlsbad
Go Back: Day One: Roswell and Carlsbad