Oh So Sick
I have now resorted to using chapstick on my raw nose. Too many tissues have left my nose in unseasonable competition with Rudolf. Being sick on the road certainly is a mixed bag.
Category Road Trip Adventures
We have zig-zagged across the country and, boy-oh-boy, do we have some gems to share! Browse campsites, off-road trails, scenic outlooks, oddities, museums, hiking trails, and more.
Read MoreOh So Sick
Showdown At The Border Truck Stop
Tonight, for lack of a better spot and disinterest in spending camp fare, we settled down in a Pilot Truck stop parking lot. We wound down the evening with the dinner of champions: cup of noodles, while watching what appears to be a van camper and a homeless man chatting.
Big Bend National Park
Big Bend National Park is 1,252 square miles of mountains, desert, and river in south east Texas. It sits in a niche along the Mexico border where the Rio Grand sweeps around half of the park's border. It is host to magnificent cliffs, breathtaking expanses, and vibrant wildlife.
Route 170
Route 170 along the Rio Grande is a constantly compounding collection of cliffs, hoodoos, ravines, wildflowers, and ruins. We are headed to Big Bend National Park but via 67 to 170, setting us up for a winding road along the Rio Grande. It is yet another spot where we rejoice in our relative isolation but constantly bemoan our limited time. The route is about as close to the US-Mexico border as you can get without swimming in the Rio Grand. In our theme of traveling the border, you can't do much better than this.
The Chinati Foundation
The Chinati Foundation is a contemporary art museum. Its houses a collection of permanent installations across the rambling campus of a decommissioned air base. But it isn't a spot you just wander in to. No, It takes an appointment, a guide, and a lot of time.
Ballroom Marfa
We had a few hours to kill before our tour at the Chinati Foundation so we hit another notable art spot in town. Ballroom Marfa is a contemporary art space in the heart of town. Like all good things Marfa, it is a converted building. Before hosting films, music, and performing arts events and a gallery, the structure was a dance hall dating back to 1927.
Marfa Lights
Seven miles east of Marfa, surreal lights attributed to UFOs, will-o-the-wisps, or the reflections of car lights and camp fires have been sited along a portion of the desert often between 2 and 3 AM. So, people camp out at a conveniently located rest stop, hoping to have their own illuminating experience.
Marfa, Texas
We have zig zagged across the country enough now to see familiar places. There goes the gas station with prices so inflated that we risked running out of gas rather than indulge the gouging owners. There is the parking lot where I taped up Dodgy I's window when it rolled down for the last time and never quite rolled back up. And up ahead is Prada Marfa. This stop is intentional because what we didn't know at the time we passed Prada Marfa the fist time is that it is only the tip of the minimalist artistic iceberg floating alone in the East Texas desert known as Marfa.
El Paso Interlude
We arrived in El Paso a little after rush hour. The freeway congestion has not yet fully cleared. I watch a truck, then a van, then a compact car drive off the free way, down a gravel embankment, and onto a service road paralleling the freeway. A car already on the road honks as one of the traffic defectors cuts him off. This is what we've been trying to avoid.
On to Texas
My driver was resolute, we would not take the 10. At least, we would not take the 10 until we reached El Paso. It's pretty unavoidable at that point. But, until El Paso, we would stay on small isolated roads where our view would be of mountains and grasslands, rather than the next car's bumper. So I plotted a course hugging the Mexico border.