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| When Alfred Gage came to Texas from Vermont in 1878, he had built The Gage as a hotel and ranch headquarters for his 500,000-acre ranch. The lobby of the Gage was warm, filled with wood and had an Old Western feel. |
Off the main lobby of the Gage was a reading room with some ginormous stuffed animal pieces.
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| The ownership of The Gage Hotel changed in 1878 and the new owner returned the hotel to its turn-of-the-century trans-Pecos glory. |
The lobby of the Gage had several large books depicting the grandeur of West and the region.
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| Lani peruses some of the books in the Gage lobby while I take a few last minute picture. Lani and I both agreed that Marathon would be a nice place to re-visit, especially as a gateway to the Big Bend region of Texas. |
And, it was in the
winds approaching Marathon, that Lani had a change in plan/heart, that being to get the heck out of the remainder of West Texas. The plan involved using Amtrak and a car rental to skip the remaining 220 miles of Texas. I wasn't crazy about the idea, but as the trip
would not exist without Lani, plans were made.
We left a little late, around 6:45, still dark but with the pre-dawn glow of the coming sunrise. For the first 90 minutes, we saw more deer running across the highway than we were passed by cars. The deer would effortlessly jump over the fences along the side of the highway.
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| I'll argue that unless you've biked across Texas, you have no idea how wide it is and, once you get past the Texas Hill Country, just a bit monotonous. While the Texas Hill Country had some punishing hills, it was visually dramatic. The West Texas desert was just hot, dry, windy and relentless. |
The rural areas of Texas (and, for that matter, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas) were very different from anywhere I had lived: individual properties, often
highly individual properties where the homeowner could pretty much do whatever...this in contrast to the ridiculously restrictive
Home Owner Associations
we've had to deal with where we've been chastised - in writing - for having a dirty mailbox at the foot of our driveway. Not so in Texas.
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| Cattle, smokers, industrial-sized yard art and, if you like small airplanes, can accumulate in your acres of land without a pesky HOA geting its panties in a bunch. |
The first 2 hours (and 20 miles) were a relative breeze…the terrain was relatively flat and the air still. Then, the winds kicked up like yesterday and we slowed down for the final hour of our bike ride into Alpine.
Compared to most of the towns we've passed through in the
Big Bend region of Texas, Alpine, TX (population=5786, or about 1/9th the population of the University of Florida campus) was a metropolois. Alpine owes its success to the opening of
Sul Ross State University in 1921 and the opening of
Big Bend National Park in the 1940s.
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| Alpine started as a campsite for cattlemen tending their herds around 1880 and grew significantly after the railroad created a town of tents for its workers. |
Wherever we went, we would use the
Around Me app and
Yelp app on the iPhone to find somewhere worthy to eat. The problem is that in these small towns, you end up with a single review of 5 stars on a lot of these places...what does that mean?. It's tough to draw serious conclusions when N=1, but, we persevered.
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| At least it was n walking distance. I remember having a forgettable meal. |
Impressons, where I think we had a sandwich of smoked meat, catered to a local crowd.
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| Texas pride was everywhere, often expressing the desire to secede. |
Locally made folk art was common in many of these small towns.
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| I really liked this cow and, if I had a truck, would have hauled it away. |
Folk art does not get much cuter than this:
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| Seriously...could you resist this face? |
Our motel of choice in Alpine, the Bien Venido Motel, was quite the bargain at $42 .
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| Did I say "clean"? Does it look to you that anything about this place could possibly be clean? Would you believe that this parking lot filled up every nght? It did, mostly, it seemed, with workers who were from out-of-town assigned to construction projects in the area. |
The
Bien Venido, like many of the the sleazy motels we frequented, possessed a certain
je ne sais quoi.
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| Je ne sais quoi? Spacious, elegant, soap the size of a postage stamp and bath towels that were better suited as a kitchen towel...yeah...je ne sais quoi I was doing here. |
Terlingua, Texas, now a ghost town, enjoyed its place in the Big Bend Texas sun in the late 1800s where the mines delivered
cinnabar, a source of mercury and prized by the Indians for its red color, is now a gateway destination for tourists traveling through the Texas
Big Bend region. And, there are enough wild flowers to make this
polyfloral honey.
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| Well, yes...of course I had to buy it. It was really thick, almost like peanut butter but the taste was nothing special...like honey. Polyfloral honeys vary in taste from year-to-year as the bees gather nectar from different flowers. Wildflower honey, the type you might find in the supermarket next to the clover or orange blossom honey, is a typical polyfloral honey. |
The highlight of the day (and perhaps the month and maybe even of the year) came when I was in the shower behind a door with a broken handle. Lani, who had been outside using the netbook, suddenly shouted “Dad!! Dad!!”. Hoping she wasn’t going to barge into the bathroom, I replied with concern “What is it, Lani?”
An email had informed Lani that she had been accepted for graduate study at George Washington University. She had only applied to four schools and her undergraduate record had some chinks, so we had been anxious…but no more. At her choice, we celebrated with a nice dinner at Reata, probably one of the nicest restaurants in Alpine…we split a rib steak and enjoyed the nice sit-down dinner.
What a great way to end the day. But...tomorrow...how to escape Texas...
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