My Favorite Texas Trip
While the country continues to remain at home due to restrictions around COVID-19, the staff at Texas Highways found ourselves reminiscing about our favorite Texas travels. In an effort to bask in the warm glow of wanderlust and plan for the future, we’re introducing a new series, “My Favorite Texas Trip.” In this collection, Texas Highways editors, contributors, and readers share the excursions around the Lone Star State that made the most impact on them.
Terlingua Ghost Town sign. Photo by John Lumpkin.
Ann Marie saw the Rio Grande for the first time from Santa Elena Canyon, Boquillas Hot Springs, and the lonesome highway from Lajitas to Presidio. “My East Coast references are the Hudson and the Delaware and the Susquehanna,” she recalled. “The setting was beautiful, though Rio Grande was more like a meandering stream.”
A staff member at the Hotel El Capitan packed us a picnic lunch for the hourlong drive to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We strolled the Pinery Trail, viewing the Butterfield Stage depot ruins, and the Smith Spring Trail. We settled at Frijole Ranch, a preserved historic home, to eat. “Sitting under the tree at the picnic table was like being in Little House on the Prairie,” Ann Marie said. “I expected Pa Ingalls to come out the door,” she said, referring to the Michael Landon character in the TV series. Later that evening, at dinner at El Capitan, Terry was in his element. An engineer by trade, he fit right in with a large group who were celebrating a birthday for one of the cloistered inhabitants of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space port 40 miles away.
Touring Marfa was a requirement because Ann Marie and Terry knew about it from stories in The New York Times. During a visit to Chinati Foundation’s collection of sculptures by abstractionist Donald Judd, a laconic guide brightened when Terry revealed his professional background, prompting a discussion of the principles of Judd’s milled aluminum structures. Besides Judd’s rows of cubes, we checked out interactive art at Ballroom Marfa and the wrecked car sculptures at La Fundacion. We ate rustic Italian at Stellina, a tourist’s favorite, but also at Mando’s, popular among ranch hands for its huevos rancheros. We actually saw the Marfa Lights, distant hovering dots in the darkness, not twinkling but disappearing and reappearing.
Kokernot field in Alpine. Photo by John Lumpkin.
The group tolerated my desire to make a short detour to Kokernot Field in Alpine. The baseball field is the result of a Big Bend rancher’s dream of replicating Wrigley Field in Chicago. We hired a character straight out of a Hemingway novel as a guide—he drove us through Big Bend National Park in his four-wheeler. One night at Terlingua’s Starlight Theater, Terry and I chatted with the evening’s entertainer, a singer. He promptly left us when he spotted two women nearby. We were told males vastly outnumbered females in this town, and trying to find a date was “like looking for a parking space. The best are taken and the ones that are available are too far out.”
By unanimous vote, we returned to Allen’s on our way back to Dallas. Miracle of miracles, the ball cap I had forgotten there more than a week ago was still on the rack.
“My Favorite Texas Trip” is a series highlighting memorable travel experiences from Texas Highways’ writers and readers.
Read the rest of the series here.
