Author: Jen Payne

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

SUNDAY

Sunday morning found us well-rested and ready for our journey down “El Camino Del Rio,” the River Road. “For over 30 miles, El Camino del Rio twists and winds with the Rio Grande, crossing arroyos, climbing mountains, and hugging canyon walls. The “Big Hill” has one of the steepest grades on a highway in Texas, and at the top, the view looks east to the Chisos Mountains 75 miles, and west into Colorado Canyon and mountain ranges deep into Mexico.”

We awoke early enough to catch the sun rising over the mountains, and all agreed that it would be great to see the sun rise in the park the next morning.

Our first stop, after coffee and a photo opp outside the hotel, was the Terlingua Ghostown, an old mining camp, now partially deserted and left in ruins. An elaborate gift shop—incredibly out of place—kept us occupied for nearly an hour, as we scouted out the first truly commercial establishment since we left Austin.

Historic Terlingua…often referred to as the “Ghostown”…was home of the Chisos Mine, which extracted cinnabar, or Mercury ore. The Chisos was the largest of almost a dozen cinnabar mines in what was once know as the Terlingua Mining District….During the boom days of 1913-1918, the population of Chisos Mine and Historic Terlingua was over 2000.

Several structures have been restored or stabilized. The main building once housed the largest retail store between Del Rio and El Paso. It now houses shops and a restaurant. Many of the stone miners’ cabins have been restored by a new generation of inhabitants. The massive adobe walls of the original owners mansion still stand, and demonstrate how quickly boom goes to bust. Although Historic Terlingua is all private property, much of it is open to the public.

The $1 walking tour brochure led us around the town and ruins, but we opted to skip numbers 6 through 15 and headed to the hauntingly attractive Ghostown Cemetery. Here, we discovered old and new graves adorned with rugged crosses of wood and iron. Candles and monuments dotted the small stone mountains standing in memory of the people who once occupied this town.

Today, people still live in the Ghostown, in makeshift houses created from the ruins. New roofs and walls attach to golden adobe brick skeletons. They call this home and we drive off toward Presidio in our SUV with our newly purchased chachki.

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

SATURDAY

Leaving Castolon, we drove through the Rio Grand flood plain, dry and dusty, with trails of old river and flood obvious in the hallowed-out ground. Rocks and sand covered the road and spit up clouds of dust that made our mouths pasty and our lips parched. We stopped for a moment at the grand Santa Elena Canyon — a massive wall of rock standing tall along the Texas and Mexico border. Beyond, Mexico. There.

We turned north, along Old Maverick Road—a well-worn, dirt road leading 13 miles north toward Terlingua and Study Butte (pronounced “stewdy by-oot”).

Driving this isolated road, we felt part of everything. Alone, it was easy to imagine the early visitors here, stunned by the awesomeness of this flat landscape, surrounded by these massive, prehistoric stone mountains.

North, at Maverick Junction, we headed northwest up Route 118 into Study Butte and Terlingua. We lunched at Ms. Tracy’s, an eclectic looking cafe with an open porch out front and a blow-up Santa next to the road sign—easy to forget it was only five days until Christmas!

My sister wanted to eat inside. “I’ve had enough of the outdoors today!” And so we sat inside, a room that felt like Ms. Tracy’s dining room, while she prepared our lunch in the kitchen next to us in this “come as you are home cooking emporium.” The three of us enjoyed the stillness of not traveling as we ate our homemade Mexican lunch: salsa, picadillo, burrittos, migas.

After lunch, we made our way to the Big Bend Motor Inn, a 1950s style strip motel planted next to an RV park at the base of stone peaks. From the front of the hotel, you could look back to the vast stone park we had just left.

My sister napped while DeLinda and I took off into town, stopping for wine and snacks. Full from lunch, we opted for snacks in the room before heading to La Kiva for drinks.

Driving along the winding road in the jet black night, we found our way to this local bar recommended by DeLinda’s hairdresser Anne Monique. La Kiva is a “a unique structure of massive sandstone boulders, cut into a terrace overlooking Terlingua Creek.” Just as unique were the patrons inside…

We followed DeLinda down the narrow stone passageway, through ominous doors into a room filled with locals—a skinny woman in overalls with long braided pigtails serving drinks, an urban-looking cowboy, 50ish, seated at the bar, a bawdy woman twisting her cropped bleach blond hair and flirting with the woman next to her, a biker with a long Amish beard leaning against a far wall, and the bass player in funky white sunglasses…

We drank, acutely aware of these strangers and not feeling very welcomed. We were tourists, doing our best to act like we belonged when clearly, we did not. The funny thing is, each of us, in our own way, were as odd as the people in that bar. Our life experiences, our quirks, our eccentricities gave us membership, even if the locals did not.

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

SATURDAY

We enter the park at Persimmon Gap, some 40 miles south of Marathon. Almost immediately, the landscape becomes Seussian—small tufts of trees, green and purple cacti, and ocotillo — tall, finger-like plans that grow from a center base and reach upward in random direction. In the spring, they are green with red flowers, but in winter, they are ashen and dry, like fingers of an old man reaching up for something more.

And as we drive, each of us imagines this place in early days, remembers the Indians, the cowboys and ranchers, the horse and cattle that once enjoyed this vast and remote wilderness.

We spy a family of javalina (do not call them pigs!) on our way to Panther Junction. On this trip we will see javalina, deer, jack rabbits, hawks, road runners, cattle, goats, sheep and golden eagles.

After a stop at the Panther Junction Visitor’s Center, we head east to the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive.

We drive for nearly two hours along this curving road, stopping along the way to visit the abandoned Sam Neil Ranch, to enjoy the view from Sotol Vista.

[The] Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive [extends 32 miles south from ] Santa Elena Junction to Santa Elena Canyon overlook in Big Bend National Park .

Wedged within the big bend of the Rio Grande, which forms the U.S. border with Mexico, the 801,163-acre Big Bend National Park contains deserts, canyons, mesas, and mountains. The drive—designed by Ross Maxwell, a geologist and the national park’s first superintendent—gives you a look at Big Bend’s remarkably varied terrain. From Santa Elena Junction in Big Bend National Park, the drive heads south. Mountains command the left view, with Burro Mesa on the right. After about 2 miles, you can make out angular and domed formations in the mountain rock that indicate ancient volcanism. Fortress—like outcroppings called dikes—are also common here. For the next few miles you ascend steadily past boulder strewn slopes. Sotol Vista, one of the best views in the park, offers a stunning perspective on Santa Elena Canyon and the floodplain of the Rio Grande. From here, the drive descends through a series of switchbacks, past views of the unmistakable Mule Ears Peaks formal icon: Tuff Canyon, named for its gray, volcanic ash rock and Cerro Castollan, a pile of volcanic rock that towers 1,000 feet. As you continue curving down, the Chihuahuan Desert benchland suddenly opens before you.

Don’t bypass the old Army compound of Castolon, a frontier trading post still open for business. Paralleling the Rio Grande, the road crosses a fertile floodplain. The scattered remains of old adobe buildings along this stretch mark former farms. About 8 miles from Castolon, the Santa Elena Canyon Overlook offers a view down on the narrow Rio Grande flowing through a chasm with 1,500-foot limestone walls, The road ends half a mile farther, where a 1.5-mile trail leads into the mouth of the canyon.

National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

SATURDAY

Was it the utter silence that kept us awake all night? Perhaps the Southern Pacific railroad that passed in front of the hotel at least three times between midnight and five? Or maybe our weary brains were filled with the thoughts of the adventure ahead? Despite it all, we awoke in the morning full of conversation and excited!

It was cold outside, maybe 35 degrees, but steaming showers in the luxurious bathroom warmed us. With breakfast snacks of fruit and bagels and coffee, we were packed and back on the road by eight.

Route 385 leaves Marathon in the distance behind us, and we make our way south into Big Bend National Park — an 801,000 acres park that fills the southwestern section of Texas and borders the Rio Grand and Mexico. One guidebook compares Big Bend to the size of the state of Rhode Island!

As we drive south toward the park, we pass a large buck along the side of the road. He grandly jumps the fence as we pass, no doubt startled by the ferocity of our mighty engine roaring across the morning desert.

That desert stretches out before us with bold mesas standing wait ahead—this is where we will travel today—to Panther Junction, east to Santa Elena Junction past the Chisos Mountains to our left, then southwest down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive which “skirts the western slopes of the Chisos Mountains, climbing up to one the park’s most outstanding views at Sotol Vista, then winding down to parallel the Rio Grande at Castolon Historic District and winding up at Santa Elena Canyon trailhead, where the pavement ends.”

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

FRIDAY

As we drove Route 385, we followed old electrical poles—short well-worn wooden stakes, in no particular shape or conformity. Some still wore glass transformers, now perched in sad and telltale disemploy.

This place is a time capsule. In New England, we make treasure of artifacts and architectures from our colonial past now hundreds of years gone. Here, the past is not so distance—a mere century, slightly more. Much of what they consider recent—houses, shops, utilities—would have been bulldozed eons ago back home, where everyone seems to strive for better and more and now!

The Gage Hotel sits like an oasis in the vast, flat-out landscape. As I flew into Austin (was that just the day before?), we passed north of Houston. The pilot announced it on the intercom and I bravely looked, expecting to see a great metropolis below, as if peering down from a skyscraper. I strained to see for several minutes before I saw it…a small remark on the ground below, like a chess piece on a giant game board.

In the same way, Marathon and The Gage sat in play in this desert.

Our bodies tired and dry from the eight and a half hour drive, we stepped into the lobby and were greeted by a warmth one imagines greeted weary cowboys in from the ranch—deep, soft leather sofas, rocking chairs, and a great buffalo head above a dancing fire. Outside, the 50 degree afternoon seemed an odd backdrop to the evergreen boughs and poinsettia.

Our room was one of the last along a long courtyard next to the main hotel. The doors, made from old mesquite, barely closed and were decorated by a red chile wreath. Inside, two iron beds with soft mattresses, down comforters, wool western blankets, and soft coffee-colored linens invited us in to rest. Clay tiles the color of terra-cotta pots lined the floors, and western decor—chaps, cowboy photos, a cowskin rug—set the mood.

The bathroom was divine with Mexican tile, wooden doors with wrought iron handles, and a linen shower curtain embroidered with colored flowers. Spa bath products of sage and rosemary and welcoming white robes bid us to stay a while and enjoy.

Welcome to Los Portales, “The Porches”, at the Gage Hotel. We hope that you enjoy your stay with us. We would like to share with you some of the more unique aspects of the architecture, the furnishing and the artifacts of the room in which you are staying. All the building materials and decor of Los Portales, and the Gage, are representative of the Mexican, Indian and Anglo cultures of the Big Bend area. They are configured around a courtyard, or “placita”, which historically provided a protected open space and often was the location of the community well. Our “well” is a fountain made in Mexico out of soft volcanic stone called “canterra”. It offers relief from the desert sun with the sound of trickling water and the cooling effect of evaporation.

The adobe bricks, a sun dried mixture of this caliche soil, straw and water, were made on the lot just north of Los Portales. Some 80,000 were used in constructing these buildings. The exterior of the buildings are plastered with three coats of cement stucco while the interior of the rooms are plastered with three coats of gypsum plaster and then finished with a coat of wax. The adobes in the patios and pool area are stabilized and have been left exposed.

One of the first things you might notice at Los Portales are the entry doors to the rooms. These doors, no two of which are the same, are very old mesquite doors salvaged from abandoned buildings in Mexico. Most of these doors are handmade and are well over 100 years old. Please be patient with them if they do not open or close easily.

The ceilings on the porches, “los portales,” and the ceilings in your room are also of an indigenous architectural style. The log beams are called “vigas” while the sticks in between the logs are called “latillas”. The “vigas” are ponderosa pine which can be found north of here in the Fort Davis Mountains. The “latillas” are made from the flower stalk of a local plant called sotol. All the sotol latillas, some 35,000, were collected from a ranch south of here near the entrance to Big Bend Park. Historically a layer of river cane would have laid over the latillas and then plastered with mud to provide a primitive roof system.

The brick on the porches, clay floor tiles and painted bathroom tiles are all from Mexico. The manufacturing processes have changed little from the way they were first made. The clay floor tiles are called “Saltillo” tiles and come from Saltillo, Mexico. The tiles are formed and laid out to dry in the sun before being fired in kilns. You may note that some of the locals dogs were out for their evening stroll before the tiles were quite dry enough. The bathroom tiles are called “Talavera” tile, and along with the sinks are hand made and painted in Dolores Hidalgo in Mexico.

Old mesquite doors

The veranda

Our room at The Gage

Embroidery & Mexican tile

Vigas and latillas

After naps—who wouldn’t—we changed and made our way to Cafe Cenizo for dinner: “creative regional cuisine with influences from Mexico’s interior, and West Texas cowboy flair.” Chilled by the surprisingly crisp night air, we welcomed the warmth of this gourmet oasis, and were thankful for the fire crackling happily beside our table.

Our newly discovered favorite, Yellow Tail Shiraz, was our wine of choice, and we dined on melt-in-your mouth beef tenderloin, bold T-bone, and perfect rib-eye , each accompanied by salad, vegetables, and luscious horseradish mashed potatoes. For dessert, peach cobbler, blackberry cobbler and a Frangelica for my sister.

Warmed by dinner, a guilty pleasure here in this remote desert town—we headed back to the room…

Quiet.

A quiet I have never heard before. It was…liberating.

No traffic. No hum of electricity. No people moving about.

Quiet.

Not cricket or bird or bug.

Standing alone outside The Gage, I looked up and saw the clearest, darkest sky sparkling with stars—Orion, the Big Dipper, the Milky Way and thousands and thousands I have never seen before.

A slow, steady whooosh—like wind approaching across a marsh—a lone car approached, then faded off into the night beyond.

Quiet, once again.

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

FRIDAY

Seven hours along Interstate 10 led us to Fort Stockton, the northern most point of our journey. Here, we stopped for lunch next to the famed Pisano Pete roadrunner statue, then made our way to Route 385 south to Big Bend National Park and Marathon, Texas.

Our trip to Marathon led us closer and closer to Big Bend country with high, looming mesas and arid deserts as far as you could see. Wire fences noted ranches and homes along the road.

Signs of approaching Marathon encouraged familiar images: shops, restaurants, people bustling about for last minute holiday gifts. Instead, we crested a small hill and looked down into town—a two block expanse with a gas station, two gift shops, a bank, coffee shop and The Gage Hotel.

It is difficult to describe exactly how foreign this place is. Branford is a growing town of 29,000; Austin explodes at 500,000—nearly 18 times as large as Branford. By comparison, the towns we visit on this trip count populations like 7,800 (Fort Stockton), 455 (Marathon), and 250 (Terlingua or Study Butte).

The far western end, or Trans-Pecos region, of Texas is the state’s most mythic. Even though few Texans live there, and fewer really know what the place is like, Hollywood has so often used the region as a Texas backdrop that to most, the Trans-Pecos is Texas. And while the dry desert region is a far cry from the more densely populated areas most Texans inhabit, it does symbolize for many Texans the wide-open, rough-and-ready quality they attribute to their state.

The region is some 30,000 miles quare, about the size of South Carolina or about three times the size of New Hampshire. Yet excluding its only city—EI Paso, which sits on its western edge—less than 60,000 people inhabit the place. While measuring the American West, the U.S. Census Bureau determined that an area was “settled” when its population density exceeded six persons per square mile. By those terms, the Trans-Pecos is still frontier. Four of its nine counties—Hudspeth, Culberson, Jeff Davis, and Terrell—have more square miles than people. The area seems a great empty space, an expanse of caliche and rock surrounded by dry mountains.

Even the region’s name speaks for that: “Trans-Pecos” might refer to the region lying on either the eastern or western side of the Pecos River, depending on the namer’s point of view. Trans-Pecos defines the area on the western side—because there are too few people on that side to name anything.

The Trans-Pecos is as isolated as any area in the United States. Residents of Presidio for example—reputed to be the nation’s hottest spot, with summer temperatures often reaching 110 degrees—must drive five hours to the nearest commercial airport at Midland-Odessa. Their daily bread comes from EI Paso, another five hours away. People who live in this town of 3,000 drive 90 miles to pick up a pizza, 60 miles to playa round of golf, and 230 miles to attend a district football game. The leading daily in Presidio is the San Angelo Standard- Times, whose Sunday edition doesn’t reach town until Monday, when the mail arrives.

People who live in tiny Redford, 40 miles downriver, must drive into Presidio or 34 miles into Lajitas over a rough, winding road, to buy a pair of shoes. The drive over Texas Farm-to-Market Road 170 (El Camino Del Rio), from Presidio to Lajitas through Redford, is one of the prettier ones in the state. The pavement snakes, climbs, and dives. On one side, red rocky canyon walls; on the other fall steep banks down to the Rio Grande. On this road, and on other in the Trans-Pecos, isolation has its virtues, but can be downright frightening, too. Three Trans-Pecos counties have no doctors, and even emergency crews can’t reach Redford in less than a half-hour’s time.

Compass American Guides: Texas

Can you imagine a town with only 250 people? That’s just 10% more than my high school graduating class!

One wonders if the urban sprawl so familiar in places like Austin and Branford will ever find its way here. McDonald’s and Targets and Taco Bell and Home Depot. And then one whispers, “I pray not!,” hoping the great and greedy commercial gods did not hear the idea!

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.

This following post represents the collective experiences and thoughts of three women who set out on a 1,500 mile trek across West Texas in December 2003. This is their “Road Trip: Big Bend.”

FRIDAY

We began before Friday even showed itself—the three of us packed into our rented Chevy Suburban.

“Not an SUV,” said my sister, with not so subtle anti-establishment undertones. In the end, I think she was most grateful for the space, as it afforded her room to nest and knit, watch and relax…finally.

For all of us, this trip was about relaxing—stopping—more than anything else. My sister, in her second year of grad school, had not lifted her head from a book in more than a year. DeLinda had been juggling multiple work responsibilities, a new house, and family concerns. And I had been at the computer in a six month marathon of just too much work.

And so we chose to stop…pile weary bones and brains into our mighty SUV and travel nearly 600 miles across West Texas to see Big Bend National Park. Our “Road Trip Big Bend.”

In honor of our adventure, DeLinda gifted us with t-shirts she had made, imprinted with our “Road Trip Big Bend” logo. I brought red bandannas for each of us. And so adorned we left Austin on that first day just past seven.

You could hear the weariness in our silence. Imagine three woman about to embark on a four-day road trip with barely a word spoke between them. Imagine!

Instead, my sister knitted meditatively in the back seat. DeLinda comfortably assumed the role of driver as I sat mesmerized by the endless horizons of Texas countryside—low scrub trees and prickly pear cactus dotting endless miles of ranch, farm land and highway.

The back seat was stocked with our food for the trip: fruits and cheese, crackers, sandwich fixins’, goldfish crackers, bagels, breakfast bars, and a box of Christmas cookies DeLinda brought from a cookie swap earlier in the week. Our supply of beef jerky never dwindled, as we stocked up regularly. While our visit to Whittington’s in Johnson City—the absolute best place for beef jerky—was an hour too early, we managed quite well on varieties sampled at every stop along the way. To be honest, I don’t ever recall walking into a convenience store with the sole mission of finding beef jerky, but such was the case. Beef jerky for breakfast? Yes, delightfully, every day.

Along the way, we passed giant wind farms. Resourceful ranchers and oilmen have assumed stewardship of the wind, harnessing its power via these great windmills. They appear to grow from tops of mesas and up from the fields—like a science-fiction landscape, eerie and mysterious.

Three windmills stood on high looking quite biblical. It would not be the first of such references—even our excursion into the desert, itself, seemed symbolic. With a foreign dryness that left both mouth and skin parched, we were lucky that our stay in the desert was a mere four days, not 40!

“Marathon is the gateway to the northern entrance of Big Bend National Park, via Highway 385. This route from Ft. Stockton south through Marathon and on to its end at Persimmon Gap roughly follows that of the great Comanche War Trail. About five miles south of [Marathon] lies the site of old Ft. Pena Colorado. In 1879 the fort was established to stave off Comanche and Apache raids…. In 1881, the Southern Pacific railroad arrived.

Marathon is nestled in the heart of the grassy rangelands of the Marathon Basin. It is cattle country and it is on the railroad lines….One notable cattle baron was Alfred Gage, the owner of 600 sections (384,000 acres) of grazing lands. In 1927, the Gage Hotel was built to serve as his headquarters. Another cattle magnate, Captain Albion Shepard, named the community Marathon because it reminded him of the lands around Marathon, Greece.”

Big Bend Area Travel Guide

Road Trip: Big Bend narrative & photos ©2020, Jen Payne.