Everyday is Saturday now, not even a Sunday anymore.

Today was a travel day as we went southish to the Big Bend National Park area where we checked into a motel that feels like it’s been caught in a time loop and is stuck in the 50s. No flatscreen TV and actual keys. The cell service is 3G and the front desk puts the WiFi password in for you. Lunch was in Pecos at Chinese Buffet- that’s what the sign said in English, sadly I can’t read Chinese characters so I don’t know it’s name. I don’t know if the town is named after the river, or the river after the town, but the river runs through it.

We lost an hour but gained, well, a new appreciation for Texas. We started out in the Permian Basin which seems to be experiencing an oil boom. There are prefab worker housing compounds all over the place. The electrical grid seems haphazard as there are lines of telephone poles as far as you can see going in every direction, with sometime two parallel lines on both sides of the road, and the lines with the big metal towers going every which way, converging at substations in the middle of no where. When we got far enough south, just like that all signs of civilization, including oil tanks and power lines were gone. We turned on to Texas 1776 and the only man made objects in sight were the road and the wire fencing along it. I spent a good part of my day just looking at and for telephone poles. They were the only trees I saw all day.

Eventually we made it to Alpine TX which is a little town at the crossroads of two highways that seems determined to trap you in town since you are forced to make about five turns to get from one road to the other. But MBH and Siri kept me on the right path and we made our escape. Just outside of town was a housing development that consisted only of a gravel road down a valley and an impressive entrance with a sign that said “We sell tranquility by the acre”. I think they don’t know the difference between tranquility and solitude.

For some reason, the less I have to say, the longer it takes me to say it.

The motel that time forgot – dig the groovy Navajo blanket on the bed. Clean clothes in the suitcase, dirty clothes in the trash bag. We are in room 12, come visit us if you can.
It wouldn’t be a travel post without an ussie, so here’s how we look in zero natural lighting.
We have three full days (four nights at our motel of convenience) to explore Big Bend National Park at what turns out be their busiest time of the year. I’d like a 100 acres of tranquility please.
Came across this twisted tree skeleton the other day. Not sure what caused it in a sheltered canyon.
The road goes ever on. Thankfully.
View from motel. Finally it’s hot in the desert.