Timing of Posts

NOTE: On this trip, I immediately encountered problems posting the blog at the end of each day. Part of the issue was that I brought only an iPad, and it doesn't play well with the Google blogger that I use. Another equally frustrating problem is the lack of internet connection at many of the hotels where we stayed.  The connections would be nonexistent or not work with Apple devices or have frequent drops.  While I wrote most of the blogs during the trip, none got posted until afterwards. I have been adding the pictures and posting in the weeks following the trip. Hence the strange posting dates.

Day 05

Today is Moab.  Specifically Arches National Park in Moab.

Moab is effectively "home" to two terrific National Parks: Arches and Canyonlands.  The entrance to
Arches is just north of town.  Canyonlands is much bigger - four times larger in fact.  It also gets half as many visitors.  It is harder to get to and, unlike Arches, there isn't a road through the park that takes you to within spitting distance of every major attraction.

While planning the trip, I wasn't aware of the differences between the parks.  I just knew that traveling to Canyonlands would easily add about two hours to today's busy schedule (we needed to get to Salt Lake City this evening).  This morning, Briggs and I picked Arches before we left the motel.  From Bluff, it is two hour straight shot up US 191 to the park.

This is just beautiful, desolate, rugged country.  Did I mention desolate?  There are minimal roads in the southeastern part of Utah (I believe I could expand that statement to include other large swaths of Utah, but I'm currently speaking about today's experiences).  For example, to get from Bluff UT in the SE corner over to St. George UT in the SW corner of the state requires driving into Arizona. Twice.  And the better part of a day.  Fortunately, we didn't need to get anywhere near St. George today.

The road up to Moab was mainly two-lane highway with some passing lanes and reasonable (i.e., fast) speed limits.  The only major town we passed through was Monticello (pop. 1980) - but it appeared bigger than the population size would lead you to believe.  Monticello was once home to one of the richest uranium mines in the country.  But that was closed in 1960, and a massive clean up project was completed by the Atomic Energy Commission in 2004.  An 18-hole golf course now occupies part of the site; it is rated the #2 golf course in Utah.  Not sure if that is on par with the #2 rated ski resort in Georgia, but... hey, ... it's something.

I knew next to nothing about Moab before this trip - but what I thought I knew was that it was a mountain biking mecca.  Coming into town from the south, however, it gives the appearance of being a four-wheel drive mecca. There are rental outfits for every type of four-wheel vehicle - Jeeps, Hummers, ATVs and side-by-sides (SxS).  It is these SxS's that are extremely popular; they're also known as UTV's, ROV's and MOHUV's. A sort of redneck alphabet. There are dozens of companies set up to rent these vehicles in Moab. I'm sure it is a lot of fun, but... I have no doubt that it is a curse to the hiking purists.

We made our way to the entrance to Arches National Park, which is right off of US 191.  We could tell that it was going to be a bit crowded.  We topped off our water in the visitor center and got the lay of the land.  Our hike for the day was the longest hike that did not require a permit - the Devils Garden Primitive Loop.  It was also at the far end of the park.  From the visitor's center, the road immediately climbs about 500 feet via a series of switchbacks - then it is rolling, twisty roads through the park. Today, it was crowded... bordering on very crowded.  And we are weeks away from the height of the season.  We managed to find one of the last parking spots for the Devils Garden Primitive Loop.

The drop to either size was dizzying.

It was definitely a long hike.  I believe the map says to allow 5-6 hours.  We did it in a little over four hours with a few deviations - there were some ambiguous parts to the trail.  Is it a difficult hike? We went on the counter-clockwise route and it started out fine.  The parks will often encourage you to stay on the trail... very specifically on the trail no matter how nebulous the trail may be.  At Hovenweep yesterday, they were a bit fanatical about it (it was bare rock six feet in either direction, but they wanted us to walk a tightrope of a path). I assumed climbing on the big rock formations at Arches was out of the question.  However, the trail actually took us over such sections.  Definitely not for those who are not sure-footed or scared of heights.  There were some people who simply turned around. I had a hard time believing the angles we were able to walk up.

The park was a lot less crowded on the Primitive Loop... but far from empty. People were friendly and the weather was stunning. Things were a lot more crowded at those arches near the road.  Tour buses unload throngs of people eager to get tons of pictures. I don't believe they are allowed too much time, so it is hurry up, take 90 pictures and get back on the bus.

We left Moab without stopping for lunch... which was following a minimal breakfast.  About half an hour north of Moab, we run into I-70, and I had assumed we'd find a spot to eat. Wrong. In fact, it was another 100 miles before we came across a restaurant in the small town of Wellington UT. We passed a hole-in-the-wall eatery named the Cowboy Club, and Briggs insisted we go back.  In all fairness, it was after 4pm and we had hardly eaten all day.  And it wasn't a complete hole-in-the-wall. We were the only customers at that time of day besides a group in the billiards room intent on drinking every Bud Light in the establishment (FYI, they actually succeeded and had to switch brands). Service was great. Food was good. Portions were stupidly huge. We got very lucky. Good job Briggs.

We made our way to Salt Lake City via US 6 and I-15.  Absolutely stunning drive.  And, as was the case with so much of this trip, the landscape changes appreciably.  Gone were the desert vistas and red rock.  We were into green valleys - the road was actually in a river gorge for dozens of miles with beautiful, smooth curves.  A driver's paradise.  And hey... we were in a hurry.

Our hotel for the night is right at the airport. Tomorrow morning at 5:30am, Briggs takes off for southern California. I'm going to miss him. We have had a ton of fun.  But, in the afternoon, Angela arrives and the fun will continue.

Day 04

After the grueling climb at Guadalupe Forest, yesterday was just right in terms of the amount of hiking.  Our original plan for today began with a hike up Mt. Taylor, the highest peak in this part of the state and one of four Navajo sacred mountains.  The top is at about 11,500 feet, and getting to the starting point requires about 15 miles of dirt road driving.  After yesterday's cold temps and wet snow, I did not want to attempt either the hike or the drive.  Our car has all-wheel drive, but the ground clearance of a Dachshund.  We elected to hike El Morro National Monument instead.

Last Winter, we passed through Grants in the Ghia and stopped at the Northwest New Mexico Visitor Center, which is right off of I-40. The Visitor Center is part of the El Malpais National Monument which covers 547 square miles – or a little less than half the size of Rhode Island.  The Visitor Center has an impressive view of the surrounding countryside and, given that we spent the night in Grants, it was a great way to start the day.

The center opened its doors at 8am, and we were there two minutes later.  Since last year, the facility has changed its name to the El Malpais Visitors Center - but still has a ton of information on other parks and National Forests in the area.  The ranger was from Daytona Beach and informed us that the road to El Morro, as well as the monument itself, was closed yesterday due to the freak snowstorm. While we received only a bit of wet snow in Grants, the road to El Morro is at a much higher elevation (it crosses the Continental Divide) and was hit pretty hard (weird, given that this was May).

The view from our car as we approached the Continental Divide

The drive to El Morro took about an hour, and we definitely saw a lot of snow.  However, the road was easily passable and the National Monument had little evidence of the previous day's snowstorm still remaining. The park opened at 9am and we were there two minutes later.  The El Morro ranger, native to the area, confirmed that ice accumulation had forced them to close the hikes in the park yesterday. We set off on a two-mile loop hike in one direction, with the ranger heading in the other looking for signs of ice.

This is actually just a few miles from the snow covered picture shown above.

El Morro is a mesa with a permanent watering hole that makes it unique in this part of the country. The water is not from a spring, but rather it is a very large pool at the base of a cliff that catches rain water.  There is no other permanent water for dozens of miles in any directions - so natives and settlers often made El Morro a campsite before heading further west.  The sandstone cliffs have carvings, petroglyphs, messages and signatures dating back hundreds of years.

Water also collects at the top of the mesa in small pools.

At the top of the mesa is a pueblo.  For the longest time, I thought "pueblo" was an individual house; but it is actually a settlement of multiple adobe or stone structures.  In this case, the pueblo housed about 1500 people for a relatively short amount of time - only about 75 years. The structures have been buried over time, with only a few excavated.  The Park Service has learned that uncovering an ancient adobe dwelling quickly leads to its deterioration; consequently, the vast majority of the structures have been left buried.

After El Morro, it was a westward trip into the Zuni Reservation, and then north to Gallup for lunch. I have stayed in Gallup NM a couple of times on my bicycle trips, and we found a New Mexico restaurant on the busy road that I have previously biked into town.  Afterwards, it was due north to Shiprock NM on US 491. As a three-digit US highway, we know that it is a spur off of 91, a north-south highway.  However, it was originally a spur off of US 66, an east-west highway.

US 491 serves the Four Corners region of the United States. It is one of the newest designations in the U.S. Highway System, created in 2003 as a renumbering of US 666. With the 666 designation, this road was nicknamed the "Devil's Highway" because of the belief by some that 666 is the Number of the Beast. This Satanic connotation, combined with a high fatality rate along the New Mexico portion, convinced some people the highway was cursed. The problem was compounded by persistent sign theft. These factors led to two efforts to renumber the highway, first by officials in Arizona, later in New Mexico. There have been safety improvement projects in recent years, particularly in NM, and fatality rates have subsequently decreased.

Although sign theft has always been a problem along this highway, thefts reached epidemic proportions when the pending number change was announced. Within days of the announcement, virtually every US 666 sign had been stolen, some for sale on eBay. Officials in Utah reported that five entire sign assemblies had been cut down with a chainsaw and stolen, while New Mexico officials reported that even signs welded to metal posts (as a theft deterrent) had been stolen. Officials speculated from one scene that someone had intentionally crashed a car into the sign post to break the welds.  I’m not making this up – Satanists are apparently fanatical.

Hovenweep National Monument is a smaller park in the southeast corner of Utah near the border with Colorado. I found it on my last trip to these area completely by accident.  Getting to Hovenweep National Monument is not easy.  The park’s website says “Do not use GPS to find your way. There are numerous paved and dirt roads intersecting each other in this remote corner of Utah.”  For this trip, I compiled turn-by-turn directions that read like a rally car's log (bending left turn, fast right, full out straight, bending right,...).  But just like last time, we found it by following the signs. Miss one of the few signs and you might as well set up a homestead because you're never finding your way home.

This is open range territory.  No fences, and wild horses and free range cattle.

Aermotor windmill near Hovenweep; little has changed with them since 1888.

Pueblo at Hovenweep

This is what our trip has looked like to this point:

The motel for tonight is in Bluff UT and looks like dorm rooms for Alaskan pipeline workers.  There are two restaurants in Bluff, and we chose the steak place.  For a Monday night, they were packed and completely in the weeds (i.e., understaffed); as expected, they got our order wrong and avoided eye-contact for the next 20 minutes.  We survived just fine.  Based solely on accents, I guess that over half of the people at the restaurant and our motel are from Europe.

National Parks

As you may have seen in the press, this year, 2016, marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.  We are visiting at least one park almost every single day on this trip, and I thought it would be worthwhile to do some research on the park system. Interestingly, the first national park pre-dates the formation of the Parks Service by about 44 years; Yellowstone National Park was established by the US Congress and signed into law by Ulysses Grant in 1872.  Grant, who was seldom sober, thought he was signing a bill for Yellow River National Park and actually signed the document as I.P. Freely. Not many people know that.  And now it is on the internet, so it must be true.

If you ever look at a map of the US, you will see (particularly out west) that there are large tracks of land designated as either National Parks or National Forests.  “What is the difference?”, you may ask. I’m so glad you did because I know the answer.  They are managed by two separate bureaucracies and have different mission statements, as shown below:

National Forests – Managed by the US Department of Agriculture.  The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

National Parks – Managed by the US Department of the Interior.  The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.

As said by Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the Forest Service, National Forest land is managed, “to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run.”  In a National Forest, you could see logging, oil production and cattle grazing in addition to the recreational use of the land.  Apart from the recreational use of the land, you will not see these types of activities in a National Park.  The National Park Service oversees much more than just National Parks; for example, they manage:

1. National Military Park, National Battlefield Park, National Battlefield Site, and National Battlefield
2. National Historical Park, National Historic Site, and International Historic Site
3. National Lakeshore
4. National Memorial
5. National Monument
6. National Park
7. National Parkway
8. National Preserve and National Reserve
9. National Recreation Area
10. National River and National Wild and Scenic River and Riverway
11. National Scenic Trail
12. National Seashore

They are also responsible for the White House and National Mall (but not Sky Mall- it no longer exists).

Together, the National Forest and National Park Services encompass 277 million acres – or about 433,000 square miles.  To put that into context, the combined area of the land under the management of the National Park Service and the National Forest Service is (much) bigger than the state of Texas. It is bigger than the 18 smallest states combined (which include some huge states like Pennsylvania and Ohio).  It covers an area that is six times the size of New England.  You could fit nearly 300 Rhode Islands into that area.  And for our international readers, it is almost five times the size of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and three times the size of Japan.

In addition to the National Forest and the National Parks, there is another US government agency that oversees large tracts of land; the Bureau of Land Management.  The Bureau is responsible for another 247 million acres - or about one-eighth the land mass of the US.  Like the Park Service, it is an agency within the Department of the Interior.  Originally, the land under the control of the BLM was land that nobody else wanted - but it has subsequently grown and land that nobody wanted 100 years ago is often land that somebody wants today.  The Bureau has a wide mandate; they oversee grazing, mining, drilling as well as recreational, conservation and wildlife areas.  Interestingly, National Monuments can be managed by the Bureau in addition to the National Park Services (or the United States Forest Service or the United States Fish and Wildlife Service).

But the National Park Service, National Forest System and the Bureau of Land Management are not the only governmental departments with large tracts of land.  Land owned by the US government can be managed by a wide variety of agencies, as the following map indicates.

On our trip, we have or will visit all sorts of parks that are under the direction of all sorts of governmental bureaucracies.  Personally, I believe the parks are great and love the idea that for a nominal fee we can hike, camp, ride or whatever on huge expanses of wilderness.  In my experience, the people who work at these parks are well-informed, passionate, friendly and hard-working. However, I do wonder if all the different agencies with somewhat similar mandates is the most efficient manner to administer these properties.  I can appreciate that they evolved over many decades under a wide range of circumstances but, perhaps, it is time to consolidate some of them.

Along those lines, the US does from time to time close or consolidate an agency.  For example, in 1996, the Board of Tea Appeals was abolished.  From 1987 until 1996, the Board of Tea Appeals was a governmental agency that adjudicated the claims of tea importers whose products were denied entry into the United States by federal tea-tasters.  I'm not kidding.  Until 1996, the US government had a board consisting of seven members, each of whom was to be "an expert in teas" to "fix and establish uniform standards of purity, quality, and fitness for consumption of all kinds of teas imported unto the United States". And while the Board has now been dissolved, the FDA still regulates the quality of tea imported to the United States under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.

Day 03

The day began in Las Cruces NM, which is about 45 miles north of El Paso.  After yesterday's exhausting adventure (exhausting for me), the plan today was to have a couple of “shorter” hikes and a lot of driving - about 6 hours in the car excluding excursions.  We needed to get from the southern part of New Mexico to the northern part of the state, and we were not taking the most direct route.

First, we drove due east from Las Cruces to White Sands National Monument; the drive to the park was only about 52 minutes and we got an early start.  Last August, a French couple died of dehydration on the same hike we were taking.  It is a tragic story; they took what some would consider to be an adequate amount of water, but it was very hot and they gave most of the water to their 9-year-old son who survived.  It was much cooler this time of year, but we carried three times as much water as we needed.

White Sands is like a giant sand box filled with fine white sugar. The park is adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range, and they will periodically close the park and nearby roads for about 3 hours when they are testing rockets.  Had we come tomorrow, the park would have been closed for part of the day for testing.

We took the Alkali Flat Trail, which is 5 miles and marked by dozens of orange tipped poles placed within sight of each other.  You climb dunes and go from one pole to another.

Because of our early start, the park was fairly empty.  We passed only two couples on our hike.  It is stunning out there... the gypsum sands cover 275 square miles of desert.  Some of the dune climbs have you scrambling to stay upright as you slide backwards with each step up.  Life is sparse in the dunes, but it is there in between dunes on the desert floor. Temps had warmed to the mid-50's - perfect for strenuous hiking.

From White Sands, it was a 20 minute drive up to Alamogordo, NM.  Personally, I really like Alamogordo (Spanish for fat cottonwood).  The city is about 20 square miles (roughly the size of Bermuda) and has a population of about 30,000.  We stopped briefly at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.  I had been before with Angela and a complete visit would take several hours. We limited our tour to the outdoor exhibits.  There are about a dozen of them (mainly small rockets including the remains of a German V2) and it is free.  Speaking of German rockets, there is a large contingency of Germans in the area that are associated with the nearby air force base.

This is the remains of a V2 rocket that was tested at the White Sands Missile Range.

Here's a (questionably) interesting fact about Alamogordo.  In urban legend, the Alamogordo landfill was the supposed burial site for millions of unsold copies of Atari video games in 1983.  In particular, copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history and often cited as one of the worst video games ever released, were buried and covered in concrete.  In 2014, an archaeological team was given permission to dig at the landfill and uncovered evidence of the Atari dumping.  The disposal of games (perhaps not millions, though) was coincident with the North America Video Crash of 1983, during which revenues of video game sales fell from approximately $3.2 BILLION in 1983 to about $100  million in 1986. Aren't you glad you now know that?

After our brief visit to the museum, we grabbed an early Mexican lunch at locals' favorite, Margo's. Not much to look at from the outside, but the food and service were good... would definitely recommend it.

About 20% of the drawings are similar to the one shown above.

From Alamogordo, we headed north on US 54 to the Valley of the Fires Recreational Area, which was about an hour away.  However, about halfway up US 54 is a turn-off for Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.  It is a park dedicated solely to prehistoric rock art and one of the few sites giving visitors such direct access to petroglyphs (prehistoric rock drawings or carvings). The number and concentration of petroglyphs here make it one of the largest and most interesting petroglyphs sites in the Southwest. We had plenty of time, so we took the 5 mile diversion to the site.  BTW, this is not a National Park, National Forest or National Monument; it is a "site" administered by the Bureau of Land Management.  The site is not very big, and they actually encourage visitors to leave the trail to see the petroglyphs.  We took the one-mile hike and then ventured out into the rock fields.

We didn't stay terribly long at Three Rivers.  Back on US 54, we continued heading north to the Valley of the Fires Recreational Area, which is adjacent to the Malpais Lava Flow - it covers about 125 square miles.  The eruption that caused the lava flow occurred about 5,000 years ago.  There is a short hike in the park that takes us out on the lava flows and shows how nature has found a way to thrive in this inhospitable environment.  However, on the drive up to Valley of the Fires, the temperature dropped from the mid-60's to the mid-40's over just a few miles.  We could see the weather coming in from the east.  By the time we arrived at the recreational area, it was cloudy and blowing a storm.  We were still in shorts, and I was freezing.  Briggs claimed he wasn't.  We hiked around minimally and then jumped back in the car.  Up the road, we pulled over at a more protected location to scout the lava flows.

We were now headed due west, basically just north of the White Sands Missile Range.  We connected with I-25 and headed north towards Albuquerque.  Before reaching Albuquerque, we turned west on SR6 and joined I-40 east of Grants - our destination for the evening.  We pulled into a Denny's for dinner, and it was snowing.  Mainly a mixture of ice and rain.  There were two Harley riders camping out in the Denny's with little enthusiasm for returning to the road.  Briggs isn't much for sweets, but we split a Bacon, Maple Syrup Sundae - available for a limited time only.  Our waitress was a bit unnerved that someone had actually ordered it; however, it was actually pretty good.

We made it to our motel at a very reasonable time.  Due to the weather, our original plans for tomorrow may change.

Day 02

In planning this trip, I chose several challenging hikes for Briggs.  He is in incredible shape and up for anything. However, I neglected to consider that I would be acting as tour guide and would need to make the same hikes as he did.  Bad oversight on my part.

The first destination on today's agenda was Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which is home to Texas' highest mountain (Guadalupe Peak). But before we got going, we had another opportunity to drive around Van Horn (which takes about ten minutes).  It is a bizarre town.  Laid out in a very grid fashion with both the interstate and the railroad running east-west about quarter-of-a-mile apart and trisecting the town. It is definitely a traveler's oasis on the I-10 corridor between El Paso and San Antonio - perhaps the best place for a hotel for hundreds of miles in either direction besides Fort Stockton.  One of the most unique places to stay in town is a real hotel called the El Capitan.  It is a landmark that was originally built in 1930. Apparently, the hotel was renovated in 2009 and it looks really good.  The rest of the town... well not so much.  Lots of trailers and abandoned homes on the land between the interstate and the railroad.  A bit better north of the railroad.

But here's something really interesting about Van Horn. About 25 miles north of town is the location of the Blue Origin Suborbital Launch Facility. Blue Origin is the space rocket company created by the amazon.com founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos.  He purchased 290,000 acres (453 square miles) of land near Van Horn to launch rockets.  To put that area in context, it is slightly more than half the size of Rhode Island.  It is twice the size of the Isle of Man.  And it is from this facility that they are launching rockets and bringing them back down in a controlled fashion.  I could explain it in detail, but it is far easier to just watch this brief video:

https://www.blueorigin.com/gallery#youtubeYU3J-jKb75g

FYI: they have about 50+ people employed at the facility and are looking for more - but you need to be a rocket scientist type.  I assume that all the employees at that facility live in Van Horn (as there is nothing else nearby), which is apt given that living in Van Horn is a bit like living on another planet.

Once we finished with our tour of Van Horn (in reality we actually just missed a turn to get out of town and had to cruise back around to find it), we headed 63 miles up the road to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  A phrase I will undoubtedly use throughout this blog is "desolate stretch of road" and this is the perfect descriptor for this drive.  I believe we passed the Blue Origin facility, but did not see any signs of it.  There were no billboards advertising Space Travel! - Two Miles Ahead (clean restrooms).  In any event, it is gorgeous out here.

The road has next to no traffic - you drive miles and miles without seeing another vehicle.  But given the lack of cars, there is a disproportionate amount of roadkill; and I found out why.  Twice I had to slam on brakes to avoid hitting an animal; first a suicidal rabbit and then a daredevil roadrunner. Those things will actually take wing and fly if the situation calls for it.  For example, they can seriously move if they are about to be hit by a 90-mph Beemer or chased by a rocket-propelled coyote on roller skates.

From Google Earth and Google Road View, I knew this road fairly well.  However, those applications don't give a good representation of the change in elevation.  We had rolling hills until we got close to the park, and then we climbed abruptly to the base of the mountains, which are at 5700 feet. Today's climb was to the top of Guadalupe Peak, which is at 8700 feet.  That is 2000 feet of climbing starting at a mile of elevation.  Round trip is about 8 miles and average time is given at close to 8 hours.

It was a weekend and the park was somewhat crowded.  The park bills itself as a hikers paradise with dozens of trails; but the Guadalupe hike appears to have been the most popular.  The camping area a the bottom was completely full as was the parking area near the Guadalupe trail-head.  We parked at the visitor center and hiked about a quarter-of-a-mile to the start of the climb.  Right off the bat, I knew I had made a mistake.  Briggs was bounding up the trail like an adolescent mountain goat raised on ephedrine and Mountain Dew; I was lagging behind like Eeyore. Well if I got to die, this is as good a place as any.  We were passing other hikers going up.  Most were early-twenty-something groups enthusiastically talking among themselves about internships, the interweb, iPhones, Bernie Sanders and all that other new-fangled stuff that kids go on about.

It is a gorgeous hike, but strenuous.  Briggs made it to the top nearly an hour before I did.  Few of those hikers who had started were going the entire way; it was a very limited number of people at the summit.  But what a view.

The hike down was easier, but far from easy.  For me, the round trip was about 6.5 hours - 5.25 hours for Briggs.  I had a hard time squeezing back into the car - my legs and back were refusing to cooperate.

From Guadalupe Mountains, we headed to Las Cruces NM via El Paso TX.  Most of the route to El Paso was country roads, but we did get on I-10 for the last bit to I-25.  It is this section that parallels the border with Mexico and you get a clear view of Ciudad Juarez.  El Paso has a population of about 680,000; Ciudad Juarez is about 1.5 million. It is such a different world across the Rio Grande.  So glad we got to see it before that giant wall is built (I don't know how they are going to afford it).

Dinner was at a Cracker Barrel, and we both ate somewhat healthy (lots of veggies). Tomorrow is a cake walk compared to today.

Day 01

It probably isn't fair to actually say "Day 01", as this post covers the first two days.  However, they did run together.  It began yesterday at 12:30pm when Briggs got off work and we hopped into the car to head towards Van Horn, Texas - some 1,500 miles away.  We hit torrential downpours, ridiculous traffic and most species of insect found in the southeastern US.  But we limped across the Texas border at 2am and paused, momentarily, at the Lone Star welcome center.

From there it was Houston, San Antonio and then the high plains of Texas.  We made a detour to Marfa TX, down in the Big Bend area via US 67 and US 90.  Marfa is a small (pop 2,200) ranching community that was home to James Dean’s last movie, Giant, and also a shooting location for numerous other films including No Country for Old Men.  Today, the town is best known as a community of (mainly) minimalist artists.  It sits in the middle of nowhere.  The town’s slogan is “Tough to get to. Tougher to explain. But once you get here, you get it.”

Well ... we got there.... but we're still processing it.  It was interesting, but just doesn't seem to be really open for business.  Next week is the Annual Marfa Film Festival, but we could only find one small restaurant that was open for business today.  It is definitely a community of starving artists... but I'm not sure if the lack of restaurants was a cause or an effect.  We walked all over town, along with a few other tourists.  There are several houses close to the main street that have been nicely renovated or turned into modern/minimalists abodes.  There is a really cool theater for performing arts downtown, but no information on upcoming events (other than the aforementioned film festival).  There is a very well preserved hotel downtown, where the cast of Giant stayed during there filming; however, even its restaurant was closed.

In Marfa, US 67 splits from US 90 and heads due south to the Mexican border. It is about 60 miles from Marfa to Presidio TX – a town of about 4,000 people on the border with Mexico; on the other side of the border is Ojinaga, a town of about 23,000 people.  For all intents and purposes, Presidio’s only road connection with the rest of the US is via this lonely stretch of US 67.  The town is so isolated that it only has a single power line connecting it with the Texas power grid.  To compensate for this tenuous power source, the town has built the world’s largest sodium-sulfur battery to store power in the event that single line goes down.

There is nothing between Marfa and the Mexican border town of Presidio, which, as previously mentioned, is 60 miles south.  Nothing that is except for the ghost town of Shafter, TX, with a population of 11.  At one time, over 4,000 people had lived in Shafter and there were thriving silver mines.  However, the town saw rapid decline when the mines closed in the 1940’s.  Shafter has recently achieved a certain amount of notoriety as being the closest town to the Cibolo Creek Ranch, where Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, 2016.  Here’s an interesting tidbit, the Cibola Creek Ranch covers an area of about 47 square miles; to put that in context, Washington, DC is only about 68 square miles.  It’s a big ranch.


All that background information on Shafter and Presidio is interesting, but not relevant since we didn't make the trip to Presidio.  We tried to find Shafter, but turned around as we were running a little low on fuel.  I can't adequately explain how desolate it is out here.  The vast emptiness makes it so beautiful and lonely - and a very poor place to run out of gas.

After Marfa (and a quick stop at the Marfa Prada) we headed to Van Horn, which is on I-10.  Almost all of "today's" trip was on I-10, except for the excursions mainly to Marfa. The road from Marfa to Van Horn was beautiful, barren and empty (except for the Prada Marfa store, which is about 37 miles outside of Marfa).  One interesting tidbit about Van Horn is that it is the terminus for US 90, which starts in Jacksonville; on the east side of Jacksonville it is Beach Boulevard, which means nothing unless you’re from Jacksonville and know that it is a major thoroughfare.  For much of its route out west, US 90 parallels I-10 somewhat closely; although, as we learned on the Ghia trip, it can be very slow going when you pass through towns (especially Tallahassee and Mobile). 

We checked into our hotel (a brand new Hampton Inn), then headed out to wash the car of the 12 pounds of insects it had collected and grab dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Chuy.  There is a chain of Mexican restaurants headquartered in Texas called "Chuy", but apparently this isn't one of them.  This one has a table permanently reserved for John Madden.

We are exhausted.  With the exception of a few naps in the car, we have both been up for about 40 hours straight.  Tomorrow is a big hiking day.