Five days lost.
We where avidly trying to follow Route 66 when we decided to ‘hang a left’ and ended up in Marfa.
No, it’s not a misspelling, we were in Texas’ deep south where we found ourselves in a converted shipping container for three nights. It was an act of madness.
Madcap as it was taking four days to explore Texas, never on the itinerary, we did take it easy and stopped off in Midland. We’d occasionally taken to having microwaved baked potatoes in our Motel room (we don’t even have a microwave at home!), not so much to save money, rather, it was actually tastier than some of the fast food options we were forced to try. Then again, why would you ever make a trip like this and eat in your room every night? We had a magnificent time in a ‘Waffle Place’ in Maumelle where we met and had a laugh with some of the most genuine restaurant staff we’ve ever met.
Now we’d got to Midland we decided on something a bit more ‘upmarket’. The rather elegant sounding ‘Cork and Pig Tavern’ popped up.
It was here we met some real Texans and not just the kind that were serving us.
My first encounter was when I was on my way to the ‘restroom’. A tall Texan asked me if Gerry Garcia knew that I’d stolen his hair (Garcia has come up more than once on this trip and it never offends). That led to an animated conversation about our trip and Scotland.
His only question was:
“How did you end up here, in the middle of Texas?”
But he wasn’t the only one. We were amazed by how open and friendly Texans are. We had just thought of them as the epitome of gun-toting red-neck Americans, but our beliefs were not confirmed by evidence. Again, two other couples took the time to stop and talk to us and amaze that we’d visited Texas.
Any fear we had of being in Texas disappeared.
So on to Marfa.
Marfa itself is one of those strange places that just seem to pop up (in this case in the middle of the desert), then gain a vibe that makes them famous for…we’re not quite sure what, unless you include the fact that it can crawl with ‘Instagram Influencers’.
If we’d known that before, we would have probably avoided the place.
As a result of the whole ‘Instagram Influencers’ thing, we didn’t actually see anything that Marfa had to offer, apart from our rather funky converted container and the fact that we ate in a pretty cool restaurant that served us - wait for it - another of the thickest steaks we’d ever seen on a plate - this time a tenderloin.
We really were in Texas.
Marfa was just a base as our sights were set upon finding the indigenous rockart at Seminole Canyon State Park and a drive along the FM 170 - the highway that follows the Rio Grande and the border with Mexico.
As for the FM 170 day trip, we are glad to advise that we didn’t happen upon any ‘bigly big’ walls!
Seminole?
Well, if you’ve been following us you will already know that we are fans of anything ancient, Seminole did not disappoint. We do know, as our friend Carol pointed out, it’s almost the same rockart that you see from Europe to Australia, the Drakensberg, and every stone age settlement in the world that decided to write on a wall.
Spacemen? Or isn’t that just fascinating?
