Jim & June's Odyssey 090212
Trip Start
Aug 25, 2008
1
28
57
Trip End
Ongoing
Alpine,
Texas,
United States
Thursday, February 12, 2009
As we were watching the weather on CCN, they advised "For those of you in Las Cruces, NM, the cold front will be going through your area in 5 minutes." It DID! The temperature dropped and the wind started just as we were departing. Thankfully it was a 60 mph tailwind that propelled us towards our next destination - Alpine, TX. Traveling with the cruise control set at 65mph, there were times that tumbleweeds were passing us. And the dust - WOW! - restricted visibility to ¼ mile and must have been blowing ½ a mile into the air. What a drive!
Along the way, we observed:
· Highway speed posted at 80 mph
· Where there's grass - there are huge ranches, with lots of windmills that have water tanks at their base. The tanks are 50 ft in diameter
· Where there is no grass, the sand has piled up around every shrub and willow. About half of the trunk is buried in sand and deep gouges are prevalent in between.
· Fuzzy stuff on the highway spaced every 30 ft. We thought it was from some plant because it resembled cotton balls - but houseflies were hovering over most clumps. We stopped and walked along the roadway for about ¼ mile. It was dead rabbits.
· Several miles of abandoned "Car Hauling Railcars" on an adjacent rail line. Evidently, not many imported Japanese cars are being hauled eastward and no Detroit built cars are going west.
· A border patrol tethered balloon along the Mexican border. It is huge! Resembling the Goodyear Blimp, it is probably 200 ft long 50 ft in diameter and has 3 large fins in the rear. It was secured to a latticed structure in the middle of nowhere. The next day, it was about a ½ mi in the air surveying a 75 mile radius.
· Pecan orchards that ran for about four miles.
In the middle of cattle country and cowboys is Alpine, TX where we stayed at the Lost Alaskan RV Park. Very friendly staff, the resort has lots of pine trees and a nice central complex. In town, we visited the Big Bend Museum that houses dinosaur bones, Indian artifacts, Mexican history, Spanish influence and American memorabilia.
Since this was our first stop in Texas, we decided to find a bar that called Longhorn, Long Branch, Lone Star, Gunslingers Saloon, Rustlers Bar (or something like that) and see a belly-up bar where everybody raises their elbows when the barkeep slides a bottle of whiskey towards you. It's gotta be a place where everyone dusts off their hats & boots IN the bar, has to have a wood floor, a foot stool under the bar, a spittoon in the corner and where a drink costs a "Plug Nickel." We found it! It didn't have a spittoon but you could hear the spurs jingle every now and then. Called "Harry's Tijaya" (watering hole in Spanish) this place had it all - hell, they even shoed a horse in the bar and got pictures to prove it.. Outside, there's a hitching post that runs on three sides of the bar and is littered (decorated) with bones from all the 'game' that the fellas shot including whitetail deer, Oryx, longhorns, horses, wild boars, antelope plus other critters nobody could recognize, lets have another beer. Inside, there are parts of bridles, harnesses, saddles, horse shoes, whiskey barrels, canteens, beer mugs, coffee cans, old beer bottles, crocks, canteens, posters and pictures donated by patrons.
The place was full of regulars that quickly gave us a "Howdy, where y'all from, where ya goin', whatcha' drivin', how ya likin' our breeze?" Charlie from Stockton, Virgil from Amarillo and Charles (the injured Vietnam Vet and now the knife and saw sharpening guy in town) walked us around their fine establishment explaining how some of the artifacts ended up here and who shot what. The area is overrun with wild pigs that are chewing up everything - ranchers will give you the bullets and pay you $20 to hunt on their place. "Wanna come shootin' pigs with us?" Virgil knew where Calgary was since he used to go to the rodeos up there but none of them heard of Edmonton.
Art, the old-timer and town historian, sidled up to June. Apparently he walks into the bar at 5:30 every day wearing cowboy hat. Today, he showed up wearing a ball cap and the other regulars didn't recognize him! When they asked him why, he replied, "I can lock on a ball cap but my cowboy hat wouldn't have lasted two seconds in this wind!" Anyways, he kept us amused with stories of the old west and about the upcoming rattle snake round-up. Apparently, Texas is overrun with rattlers so they're slaughtered as soon as they come out of their burrows - pickup trucks full of them. We thought he was kidding until he said, "Hell no, my friend 'Stubs' lost 2 horses because of snake bites so he killed 28 of them with a shovel!" "And remember, you can't kill 'em with one swat, they'll still lunge at your face after 3 whacks - you gotta hit 'em 30 times. If you get bit, you gotta get help right away, they can kill ya, sonny." A number of out-of-towners join in because they like the sport or they want the meat!!!!!
Amazingly, this bar is not even two years old. The German owner asked his patrons to dress it up by scratching their brands into the bar, hanging stuff on the walls, building a hitching post, littering the entrance with animal skulls and broken pottery, etc, etc. Then he left the doors open for a couple days to get dust on everything. It looks & feels 200 years old and is what we were hankerin' for.
When we were leaving, the barkeep gave us a souvenir plug nickel that they use during "2-for-1" happy hours. You pay for one beer and you get the 'wooden' nickel for your next one. What a great advertising gimmick! Someday, we'll use ours.
Things we Learned:
Just west of Alpine is the little town of Marfa that's famous for a phenomenon. Thousands of years ago the native inhabitants recorded sightings of strange lights in the sky - they're still there and nobody knows where they originate from; scientists are baffled. The state built the "Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center" to allow visitors to observe someone waving flashlights at you - from outer space! Next time around, we'll have a look for them ourselves.
Visited:
McDonald Observatory - Getting there was half the fun - steep climbs, curvy roads and breathtaking vistas before reaching the highest highway in Texas. The observatory has one of the largest telescopes in the world with a 432 inch diameter lense.
Fort Davis - An adobe built fort that has dilapidated to the point that it's not worth the stop. The adjoining town is OK where the mainstay is the employees of the nearby McDonald Observatory and government workers.
Rattlers & Reptiles Museum - Upon entering the exhibit the first thing we noticed was the amount of garbage lying around. Although there were several cages that apparently housed various varieties off snakes and reptiles, the lighting was so terrible that we couldn't see anything inside. Nobody was manning the place either, so we left. What a disappointment!
Crows Nest - An area SW of Fort Davis where the famous red rocks provide picturesque scenery.
Chihuahua Desert Nature & Botanical Gardens - Exhibits the animals, trees and rocks that you can see in this area. It also has several fossils on display and a refurbished mining operation.
Village Greenhouses - A 16 acre complex completely under glass that grows nothing but tomatoes in hydroponic conditions. Unlike our tomatoes, these grow in clusters like grapes.
Davis Mountains - The formations are very unusual and look like somebody stacked huge rocks side by side or one on top of the other. It makes one wonder how they don't come tumbling down. The loop drive along Hwy 166 contains various biomes and very nice scenery. We saw javelina (small sport hunting pigs), feral hogs (cross between domestic & wild), pronghorn antelope and mule deer.
The Texas short grass supports thousands of Herefords, Blank Angus and Texas Longhorns on several ranches - some are 300,000 acres in size and have 5000 cows. It takes about 6 range cowboys to constantly move their herds to better pastures over rock terrain and through canyons that are too rough for quads, ATV's, etc. They change horses at noon every day and never come back to the ranch house for months at a time. Every meadow has a small shack or an army tent for accommodation - no power.
Sammy (a wrangler at the Evans Ranch) carries 3 rifles (for cougars) and 2 pistols (for rattlers) but considers spiders more dangerous than snakes with the 'brown recluse spider' being the most feared. Their venom will kill the affected tissue (and keep spreading) and causes extreme muscle and joint pain. Other than a thorough washing with ammonia or alcohol, there is no antidote and if you experience multiple bites, you'll die in 3 agonizing months.
Anyways, back to the cougars! He decided that he can make money by live-trapping cougars (instead of shooting them) so last year he caught 8 and sold 'em to California and New York wanna-be-cowboys that want to brag about their ferocious hunting experience. He gave us a cougar claw as a souvenir and stated that next year, he'll catch us for a beer at Crystal Bar or Harry's Tijaya in Alpine. "Y'all come back, eh?"
