After spending the past few nights camping in Big Bend National Park, it was time for us to emerge back into the world of taking showers and not sleeping on the ground!
On our final night in Big Bend, after breaking down our campsite in near record time (around an hour, I think!) we headed out to do one final hike in the park, the Lower Burro Mesa Pouroff trail. This was a good choice, as the 1.1-mile out and back hike wasn’t too much of an effort, and gave us a good view of some geologic features we hadn’t enjoyed yet.
After stretching our legs on the hike, we exited the park via the Maverick Entrance station, and ventured to the “ghost town” of Terlingua to see what there was to see.
And the answer was “not much.” We ended up spending less than 30 minutes in the ghost town, total, and it was the only thing we did on the trip that I’d probably recommend skipping entirely.
However, I wouldn’t tell you to skip the town of Terlingua entirely though, because after the ghost town, we had one of our best meals of this whole trip: an excellent authentic Mexican lunch at Rio Bravo restaurant in Terlingua.
From there, it was just about a 2-hour drive into Marfa, Texas.
If you haven’t heard of Marfa yet, usually in an overly indulgent review from some place like the New York Times or Pitchfork, well, it’s a unique place. Imagine if New Yorkers and Los Angelenos invented what they “thought” a stereotypical West Texas small town should be like…that’s kind of the vibe in Marfa.
Originally famous as the setting for the movie Giant, we had booked a room at the same place the cast and crew stayed during that movie, the Hotel Paisano.
Once we’d checked in, we headed off to experience what Marfa was famous for: art, of course! After driving out to photograph Prada Marfa (an art installation by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, featured at the top of this post), we stopped by the Chinati Foundation to explore the works of Donald Judd, Marfa’s one time artistic patriarch and benefactor.
Judd’s stuff was pretty abstract for us, though. Soon after, we headed back into town to explore the current Andy Warhol and Maria Zerres exhibits (which were cool and free to explore, but no photos allowed).
After all that art-ing, we’d worked up quite the thirst, so we retired to the bar of the hipster haven Hotel Saint George for a cocktail. One cocktail turned into two, and before we knew it, it was dinner time. So we strolled over to Stellina for our first — yes, first — dinner of the evening.
And Stellina didn’t disappoint. It could totally hold its own with restaurants from Austin or Houston. But since we only had the one night in town, we did our best to leave room for a second dinner at new culinary up-and-comer, Capri.
At the Capri, we shared the queso flameado and a chile relleno in a rich, almost bitter mole sauce while sipping on cocktails made with tequila, mezcal, and sotol.
It’s also where I took what I consider the “Marfa-iest” photo of the night: a couple of hipster bartenders in truckers hats at a fine-dining restaurant, serving a couple of actual cowboys at the bar.
Finally, after gorging ourselves, we headed back to our room at the hotel to fire up that adobe fireplace and enjoy the comforts of sleeping on an actual bed again!
The next day, which happened to be Easter, we walked next door to Aster for some coffee and excellent French pastries before hitting the road once again. Bidding adieu to Marfa, we headed over 90 minutes to the tiny town of Alpine to photograph that town’s “answer” to Prada Marfa: the Tiny Target.
A former railroad switch station made to look like a very small version of the retailer, we only took photos from afar, as a very large and very angry looking colony of bees had set up camp inside the Tiny Target.
From here, we continued another 2.5 hours to another tiny town, that of Ozona, Texas. There, we had our Easter feast, served up by the very sweet couple who run the Wagon Wheel BBQ. The brisket was moist and flavorful, but the real showstopper were the fall-off-the-bone pork ribs. Yum!
After this, our plan had been to continue onto Sonora and stop for a tour at the Caverns of Sonora; unfortunately when we arrived, the tours for that day were already full. So, we continued the remaining three hours back to our house without another roadside attraction, and made it back with plenty of daylight left to unpack our car, snuggle our animals, and get back to reality.
I hope you enjoyed this review of our West Texas Road Trip! Tell me your favorite West Texas town in the comments!
