The 'Real West' at Last

Well we left San Antonio on 1/24 and headed out US 90 down to Del Rio on the Rio Grande and on to Alpine. As far as Del Rio it was just flat grassland except for this great sign coming into Hondo, TX.

From Del Rio on it was what Easterners like us expect 'the West' to look like just dry scrub along with canyons and mountains. The Pecos River's bridge is 273 feet above the river, but it looks like a mile when you're on it. It has a 'No Diving From Bridge' sign. Which struck us as funny because of the 273 ft. tall bridge and only about 2 ft. of water down below. I think they should just go ahead & let anyone who wants to take a dive. Think what it could do for the gene-pool.

In Sanderson, TX we stopped for gas and Cindi almost ran off with some real cowboys. They were hauling cows and horses in a couple of trailers along with a black lab in the truck bed and all had on spurs...(Cindi's side note tight jeans 'nough said). I had to push her back in the car and get her out of there before she ran off with them.

We drove past Alpine, through Marfa around the mountains west of Fort Davis and back to Alpine. We discovered that the movie Giant was filmed in Marfa...who knew.







The Marfa courthouse was pretty impressive.

As were the mountains west of Fort Davis.

Back in Alpine we ate at the Edelweiss Restaurant & Brewery. Good meal, but great dark German beer. Since we had so much food we were unable to drink a second beer...yes we did split a dinner between us or at least thought we had. Those cowboys must have huge appetites because we thought the waitress had messed up the order. The ticket proved she had in fact split the meal onto 2 plates...beer $2.25 each and a full plate of schnitzel, Bavarian potatoes, & onion rings for only $12.

We stayed at the Antelope Lodge in Alpine, TX for the night. It is a remodeled cottage-style motor lodge originally built in 1949. It was really quite nice and even had the original all-tile shower in turquoise and pink which was pretty cool as it was hokey.

We hit the road early today (Sunday) and headed out US 90 to Van Horn, TX and continued on north to the Guadalupe National Park on the NM border. The views from the road are great and the Guadalupe mountains are pretty impressive. Guadalupe Peak is the highest peak in Texas can be found here at over 8700 feet in elevation. We had no idea we'd find such large mountains in Texas. While inside the park we took a 5 mi. hike up into McKittrick canyon that was really pretty although rocky. We walked up to the Pratt Cabin which was built back in the 30's totally out of stone & heart of pine. The back porch chairs were the perfect spot for our lunch of apples & sun chips.

Sunrise between Alpine and Marfa, TX.

Yours truly and Cindi at Guadalupe peak in Guadalupe National Park. It was really windy and I had a bad hair day.

Pics from our hike on McKittrick Canyon trail

Pratts Cabin w/ hot model. Note the all stone roof. I have no idea how they keep it waterproof.











From there we headed through flat grassland to Roswell, NM. Through that stretch we ran across our first tumbleweed. When you hit them at 70 mph they pretty much explode. I was expecting Roswell to be just a crossroad with all kinds of UFO and alien stuff. It turned to be an actual city a couple of mile across, with a downtown, stoplights, car dealers and even several 8-10 story buildings. It was a big let-down, but we did see The International UFO Museum and Research Center. It was cleverly disguised (probably by aliens) as an old movie theater, but I'm pretty sure it was a crashed UFO.

We are spending the night in Ruidoso, NM. I'm not sure what it's claim-to-fame is or better yet was, but it looks like it's time has come and gone. Most of the town is old and somewhat rundown. A bunch of the older and unique businesses like the 'Burger Trolley' are closed. It certainly sounded better when reading about it online...it doesn't show well in person. Tomorrow we're heading up to Taos, NW for our first taste of Western Skiing.

Edit: Boy were we wrong about Ruidoso. We thought we had gone though town but we just went though an old part and there is a small area that doesn't have much which we thought was the end of town. When we left town the next morning we went further and found the real town. It is all new and growing. I think it is mainly based on skiing at Ski Apache, but unfortunately they have had almost no snow and it was 55F as were were leaving town early in the morning. Ski Apache is less than half open and the town is dead right now. I suspect it really gets crowded when it snows though.