Marathon, Texas

The long highway stretched out ahead of us. I drove while Ghis slept.

We didn’t see many towns as we drove through the hills. Then out of the blue we arrived in Marathon. Marathon is the first of three towns – Marathon, Alpine and Marfa.

We stopped and had the best hot dogs ever and a good milkshake at a little diner. People were very friendly and they fell in love with Carmanah. I walked down the street and found a little French grocery with lots of organic produce and other stuff we like to eat – a definite sign of tourism.

Wall decoration in Marathon
The place to stay in Marathon.

We could have stayed longer, but wanted to get to Alpine to fill up the van with propane – we need it to heat the van at night.

Mountains

On the way out of town, we saw a pack of wild boars by the side of the road. There are three million feral pigs in Texas and they are not friendly. They were a ways back, so I stopped to take a picture. The pigs were already running in the opposite direction, but Ghis came out holding a big stick just in case. My hero!

The pigs were more scared of us.

Southwestern Texas

Don't run away!

We said goodbye to the deer and the caverns and drove along a backroad where we passed a lot of ranches and saw some donkeys and horses alongside the road. We even saw an armadillo!

For a long time, the landscape was flat. Then we started going down and it looked like this.

I felt like my camera couldn’t begin to capture how big the landscape is.

It's surprising to see a big river.

A few times we got out of the van to look around. I got really prickly little things on my shoes that hurt my fingers.

Ghis on the van.
Cool mountains.