A place where few live but everyone wants to go
It isn’t because it’s cost prohibitive or exclusive in any way. In fact, its dusty, remote, the accommodations are far from glamorous and there is actually very few amenities in general. Have I sold you on it yet?
Its a place I knew by name only and wasn’t interested in looking in to it, I had no reason to. No one talked about it. I would occasionally see bumper stickers on Jeeps and coolers but didn’t even know exactly where it was. Didn’t care to look. I was under the impression everything West was flat, boring and not intended for visitors. But my wife, a native Texan suggested we go see it. We were fairly newly married and had just seen a movie filmed in a funky little town with a weird name, so I finally did some research, I was intrigued.
The town was Marfa. It is an extremely remote small town in the middle of literally no where. But there was a lore about it. People were moving there! Not in droves, it still has a very small population, but a town like that is a place you are usually trying to move away from. We found an extremely unique lodging experience at a place that rented out classic renovated Spartan travel trailers. We found a few popular tourist spots to add to our list but also knew we were making a day to visit Big Bend National Park. What we didn’t realize was the vastness of all the communities and areas associated with the Big Bend area.
We start driving from Austin and we continue driving, and the drive continues. The landscape changes drastically. From the rolling hill country of central Texas to a very arid scrub land with plateaued mountain like hills. The very rocky terrain seems to never end with giant windmills lining the horizon in each direction. I had no idea what to expect as we approached what seemed to me, a non Texan, to be the most western sounding town name I had ever heard. Fort Stockton Texas. This place, a flat desert community in oil country off of interstate 10 was some sort of gateway to Big Bend?
It absolutely was. Because once we got off of I-10 and began driving south towards Mexico the landscape started to change again. But this time I was seeing actual mountains and they went on for miles. No windmills, no oil rigs and hardly any other cars. We were headed to a town called Alpine, which I thought was an interesting name for a town in hot humid Texas. Not exactly an Alpine climate. But this town sits at over 4,000 ft above sea level and has the climate and landscape of a place called Alpine. Except this was unique, there were large evergreen trees lining mountains of red dirt and rocks. Almost as if Mars had a forest. The adventure really started here.
I tend to romanticize small towns. I see myself living there. I pick out a house and imagine what life for my wife and I would be there if we never left. My imagination never stopped as we drove towards the endless expanse towards Marfa. We checked into our Spartan trailer and just kept looking out across the endless landscape with peaks off in the distance. We ventured into town for lunch and the weather was perfect. There wasn’t much but it had personality unlike any other small town I had been to. There was pride in being remote, in being a small town and turning what most people might think is worthless land into a destination of sorts. The place was taken care of and while it seemed like a ghost town you could tell the locals loved their home. The temperature dropped quickly and the outdoor tub I sat in that night drinking a beer and stargazing started to get cold. It was the darkest sky I had ever seen.
There was no television in the trailer, just a radio preset to National Public Radio, which seemed authentic to both the old timers and hipster transplants. We listened while we sipped our coffee watching the sunrise erasing the pitch black sky and revealing the limitless possibilities of what we could see that day. Those possibilities quickly became realities when we started making our way to the national park. Driving back through Alpine and passing through Marathon. There is only about 30 minutes between each of these towns and the roads are straight and the speeds are fast but they all seem so much further from each other. That was when we turned down the Main Park road and realized what far really is. We drove another 40 minutes to one of the park entrances, paid our fee and stopped at the visitors center. We got some suggestions from the rangers but as we pulled out of the station and came to the top of the hill the vastness just continued to expand!
I don’t know if I thought that you drive in and can see the Rio Grande and Mexico and just drive along that or what. But this park is 1200 square miles and we were still an hour and a half from the river and Mexico border. We drove and were just in awe of everything realizing just then we needed more than one day here. We got in what we could because we still had almost a 3 hour drive back to our trailer. But we got to see something special before having to head back.
We got to Santa Elena Canyon as the sun was going behind the impressive cliffs that walled off the river on the Mexico side. The limestone walls tower above you as you go deeper into the canyon walking on a soft river silt path lined with lush bamboo. This is when I was officially hooked. It was the combination of being with my beautiful wife and seeing her enjoying this place as much as I was and the feeling that this is truly a special place. We made it back tired and dusty but excited to venture up to Fort Davis and go to the observatory for some amazing star gazing the next night. Fort Davis, yet another charming small town that has this special place feeling all in its own. The landscape changes there slightly too. Driving through the Davis Mountains was closer to what Alpine felt like, green, lush and untouched. We drove even further into the middle of nowhere, up mountains and through canyons for a truly unique experience. The Star Party at the McDonald Observatory. With some of the darkest skies in the country you can see things with your naked eye that are absolutely incredible, the true sky above you. No light pollution and good air quality make all the difference. We even got to see a super nova through a massive telescope. I will write another post specifically about Fort Davis at another time.
That marked the end of our first journey out there.
On the drive home I knew I had to go back, I knew my wife wanted to go back. The problem is she hates road trips and going out to Big Bend country is a never-ending road trip. She loves the destination but the journey is the issue. So I knew it wasn’t going to be a regular thing, probably not even an annual pilgrimage. That draw to go back was strong. But I didn’t make the trek again for over 3 years. But this time it was different. The next trip out there was when I got the real experience and fell even deeper into the mystery, the legends and feeling a stronger connection to this odd desolate place.
Have you ever been to a functioning ghost town? I will tell you about it next time.
