The last time I went to West Texas, it was August and I was on crutches. It's much better in April with full mobility. Ironically, I roughed it way more on crutches.
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| Moon rise at Indian Lodge |
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| Indian Lodge |
This time around, Andrew's parents and his aunt and uncle planned a long weekend for all of us, based in Indian Lodge in the Davis Mountains State Park. Andrew and I drove out on a Wednesday and I was pleasantly surprised that the drive from Austin to the Davis Mountains was only 6.5 hours. I thought it was 8. We beat the real grown ups to Indian Lodge (they were coming from Houston via Kerrville via San Antonio via a bunch of backroads for geocaches), so we checked in, dropped our bags in our room, and wandered the beautiful hotel made to look like an adobe village. After our tour, right on time, the adults arrived.
After Ed, Sharon, Mary, and Lee settled in, we piled into Mary and Lee's car and drove to Marfa for dinner. Only 30 minutes away, it was the first of a few satellite destinations on our list.
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| Paisano patio |
We had dinner at Hotel Paisano, the fancy hotel in Marfa, followed by drinks on their picturesque patio while we waited for the sun to go down. Aside from the Chinati Foundation (which we did not go to but I've been to on that crutches trip--highly recommend), the Marfa Lights are the biggest attraction in town, but you can only see them at night. So we had a little time to kill before driving over to the viewing area. On a good night, visitors can see inexplicable dots of light on the horizon, moving in weird and unpredictable ways. Some seem to fly right at you, others dance around or flicker, and still others just flash on occasion.
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| Looking for the Lights |
I say this based on experience. I've seen them before, and they're super cool on a good night. Theories abound as to what causes the lights (aliens, car lights,
atmospheric reflections, cow farts, etc.), but there's still no
scientific consensus, which is one of the biggest draws. We all think we'll be able to solve the mystery. Unfortunately for our group, we did not make any groundbreaking discoveries that night. We saw a couple lights in the distance that might have been remarkable, but also might have been porch lights on distant houses. After about 30 minutes of valiant staring, we all gave up. No Marfa Lights for us.
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| Old Mine Trail, Big Bend |
The next morning Andrew and I got up and headed straight for Big Bend National Park. We were going to spend the day there, while the grown ups went to Terlingua (a very cool ghost town with a general store and a bar full of locals, but not much else). The drive for me and Andrew was about two hours to our trail head. We hiked the Old Mine Trail, a nice, 5ish-mile roundtrip. After the hike we drove around the park for a while, seeing the Santa Elena Canyon before heading back to Davis Mountains.
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| Old Mine Trail, Big Bend |
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| Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend |
There's one restaurant at Indian Lodge, but they're only open for breakfast and lunch. (Side note: If you're in the area, go there for breakfast and order something you can put their syrup on. Best syrup ever. It tasted almost like an ice-cream topping, caramel or dulce de leche. Do it.) But it was getting close to dinner time, so Andrew and I drove into Fort Davis (the town by the Davis Mountains State Park) to scope out the options. It's a cute small town, with a main street housing pretty much all the food choices (which are limited). We decided to try the Blue Mountain Bistro and, despite the dreadful service, had a delicious meal. Then we were going to wander the cute stores on the main street, but everything was closed already. It was maybe 7:30.
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| Hotel Limpia, Blue Mountain Bistro |
The next morning we hiked through the Davis Mountains and into the Old Fort of Fort Davis. It has a lot of the old, preserved buildings from when it was a functioning fort after the Civil War. At some point the army converted it to a "buffalo soldier" fort, and it was interesting to read about the history and class systems in the fort. But it was hot and we were in full sun and I accidentally kicked a rattlesnake who was sleeping in the grass, so we decided to leave pretty quickly. The roundtrip hike was about nine miles, and Andrew and I both got sunburned. Other than those two hikes, we did a lot of lounging around the hotel, reading by the pool, taking naps, and so on.
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| Old Fort, Fort Davis |
We also drove out to the McDonald Observatory, about 20 minutes from Davis Mountains, for a star party one night. It's a fully functioning, academic observatory, and they frequently host star parties for the public to come out, listen to experts talk about astronomy, and actually look through some of the professional telescopes. They had about seven giant telescopes set up that night, trained on different spots in the sky, and an expert at each one to explain what you were looking at. I loved it, and highly recommend it. One tip, though. The party starts in an open-air auditorium with a speaker pointing out constellations in the sky and discussing all things astronomy. It's interesting, but not the best part and kind of basic information. After about 20 minutes of talking, the speaker paused and said people with kids or anyone generally impatient was free to get up and start looking in the telescopes if they wanted. Everyone else could stay seated for the rest of the talk. I'm impatient, so I headed right for the telescopes. Most people stayed for his talk, so the lines at each scope weren't crazy. I managed to look through almost all of them before he released the rest of the audience, at which point the lines got awful. So leave when the speaker makes the first offer.
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| Planet Marfa tipi |
We spent our last full day back in Marfa, wandering around before lunch at Pizza Foundation, and wandering around some more before drinks at Planet Marfa, my new favorite spot in town. It's a beer garden with an old school bus, a tipi, and little tables tucked into random angles around the patio. But then it was time to head back to Indian Lodge for our last lazy evening in West Texas before the not-as-bad-as-I-expected drive back to Austin. I love this corner of my home state for its vastness, variety of landscape, quirky character, and peaceful vibe. I'm sure I'll be out that way again within the next few years. If you have any favorites in the area, please let me know!
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| West Texas sunset |
