I left the park just before sunrise. I never did see a shower room. The place was quiet, no one was up yet, and if they were they were probably in their rigs and out of sight.
I could not find a hotspot anywhere that I could access. The town was still asleep except for the El Patio restaurant in the “main drag” and I walked inside with my laptop. Several tables of hat-wearing ranchers were already inside speaking in Spanish. I ordered Huevos Rancheros.
I stayed an hour to assemble my travel notes. After 8am the Sunday special was offered: All-you-can-eat Menudo for $5.25. Winter Texans began coming inside filling up the tables. I left to give the servers more free tables.
I gassed up in town at the Fina for $3.29. The woman attending the counter could not tell me what kind of road it was toward Ruiosa, further north along the river, or what kind of road went from Ruidosa to Marfa. In my Texas Mapsco it shows a dirt road which I assumed was a passable forest road. She showed me a Texas tourist map that shows a road that comes to a dead end. I drove this road anyway.
"No services for 48 miles" warned one sign. No problem, I was gassed up.
Farm Road 170 goes to Ruidosa and one more town further north, Candilia, and stops. It's a road with many dips that is prone to flooding, and many signs along the way warn drivers of that. I can imagine teens driving this road, up and down the dips, for a thrilling roller-coaster effect, but in my van I took it easy.
Ruidosa was nothing more than a community of a few neglected houses and an abandoned adobe church in bad disrepair. Pine Canyon Road is the dirt gravel road that locals take to Marfa, 54 miles away. I turned north on this road through the Chinati forest, passing an unofficial landfill of washers and dryers, car parts, oil barrels and other bulky parts. Ten steep miles is private property on either side and No Trepassing signs are clearly posted.
The road was scenic but I could tell the van was straining. This road in some spots was no more than a high forest road, with some grooves and holes and large rocks in the lane. Three fullsized pick-ups passed me the other way on this road, luckily in portions where two cars could squeeze through. Along some tight corners the road was dangerously narrow and obviously prone to rockslides and flooding, but my van held tough. I was glad to get to the northern side of the mountains where Pine Canyon road continued into Ranch Road 2810.
A family of javelina grazed along the road north of the mountain pass. My vehicle had startled the pigs. I had seen my first javelina on this trip just a few miles earlier, a young dead javelina. These pigs were rooting along the road's shoulder but scurried into the nearby brush when I came through.
Marfa, TX was still 32 miles away, on now more lower terrain of cattle grazelands and windmills churning in the wind.
I got to Marfa at 11:30am. A small town of 4100, two trains rolled through the center of town a I parked near the famed Paisano Hotel in town, where the acting crew of Giant stayed during their filming. I was at first unaware of this, but the friendly hotel staff encouraged me to look around and even go into the rooms that were unoccupied. One cleaning woman showed me James Dean's small room, which rents for $139 a night (prices for each individual room vary like the bedsheets do, and are posted on the front doors of each room). "Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson stayed in room 211" she went on, and let me go inside. This room was a suite with acess to the hotel's upper deck, its own kitchen, two bedrooms and a living area. This sells for $229 a night, but more posh rooms are even more expensive.
Several guests who had vacated before the noon check-out time had left their wine bottles behind. This is clearly an upscale hotel with pesonality and not stuffy and rude like Lajita's Badlands Motel. I liked this place and walked around more, up and down the two-floored hotel to marvel at the historical photographed in the hallways, paintings by local artists in the main lobby, and black-white photos of all the crew of the Giant that was here in the 1950s.
I could not find a hotspot anywhere that I could access. The town was still asleep except for the El Patio restaurant in the “main drag” and I walked inside with my laptop. Several tables of hat-wearing ranchers were already inside speaking in Spanish. I ordered Huevos Rancheros.
I stayed an hour to assemble my travel notes. After 8am the Sunday special was offered: All-you-can-eat Menudo for $5.25. Winter Texans began coming inside filling up the tables. I left to give the servers more free tables.
I gassed up in town at the Fina for $3.29. The woman attending the counter could not tell me what kind of road it was toward Ruiosa, further north along the river, or what kind of road went from Ruidosa to Marfa. In my Texas Mapsco it shows a dirt road which I assumed was a passable forest road. She showed me a Texas tourist map that shows a road that comes to a dead end. I drove this road anyway.
"No services for 48 miles" warned one sign. No problem, I was gassed up.
Farm Road 170 goes to Ruidosa and one more town further north, Candilia, and stops. It's a road with many dips that is prone to flooding, and many signs along the way warn drivers of that. I can imagine teens driving this road, up and down the dips, for a thrilling roller-coaster effect, but in my van I took it easy.
Ruidosa was nothing more than a community of a few neglected houses and an abandoned adobe church in bad disrepair. Pine Canyon Road is the dirt gravel road that locals take to Marfa, 54 miles away. I turned north on this road through the Chinati forest, passing an unofficial landfill of washers and dryers, car parts, oil barrels and other bulky parts. Ten steep miles is private property on either side and No Trepassing signs are clearly posted.
The road was scenic but I could tell the van was straining. This road in some spots was no more than a high forest road, with some grooves and holes and large rocks in the lane. Three fullsized pick-ups passed me the other way on this road, luckily in portions where two cars could squeeze through. Along some tight corners the road was dangerously narrow and obviously prone to rockslides and flooding, but my van held tough. I was glad to get to the northern side of the mountains where Pine Canyon road continued into Ranch Road 2810.
A family of javelina grazed along the road north of the mountain pass. My vehicle had startled the pigs. I had seen my first javelina on this trip just a few miles earlier, a young dead javelina. These pigs were rooting along the road's shoulder but scurried into the nearby brush when I came through.
Marfa, TX was still 32 miles away, on now more lower terrain of cattle grazelands and windmills churning in the wind.
I got to Marfa at 11:30am. A small town of 4100, two trains rolled through the center of town a I parked near the famed Paisano Hotel in town, where the acting crew of Giant stayed during their filming. I was at first unaware of this, but the friendly hotel staff encouraged me to look around and even go into the rooms that were unoccupied. One cleaning woman showed me James Dean's small room, which rents for $139 a night (prices for each individual room vary like the bedsheets do, and are posted on the front doors of each room). "Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson stayed in room 211" she went on, and let me go inside. This room was a suite with acess to the hotel's upper deck, its own kitchen, two bedrooms and a living area. This sells for $229 a night, but more posh rooms are even more expensive.
Several guests who had vacated before the noon check-out time had left their wine bottles behind. This is clearly an upscale hotel with pesonality and not stuffy and rude like Lajita's Badlands Motel. I liked this place and walked around more, up and down the two-floored hotel to marvel at the historical photographed in the hallways, paintings by local artists in the main lobby, and black-white photos of all the crew of the Giant that was here in the 1950s.
Although there wasn't much to see in Marfa, I liked this town and its people.
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