Back on the Road Again! Marathon, TX – 3/22-30/2019

Hi everyone!  Sorry for being so tardy in posting a blog entry – can’t believe it’s been 3 months since my last one!  Since Karen and I were just hanging out in Austin at Emma and Robin’s house for the past several months, there really wasn’t much to tell you about our RVing.  During our stay in Austin, we handed our RV over to a company that specializes in doing RV renovations so that we could make our RV even more comfortable (Photos and video clip to come in a later blog post!).  That renovation process took longer than we had expected – we didn’t get it back until the end of January.  So, why didn’t we jump into it then and get back on the road, right?  Well, first, with the Federal government shutdown during that time, it meant that the National Parks would either be closed or under-staffed, so knowing that our first major stop would be at Big Bend National Park, we didn’t want that trip to be at risk…so we were happy to stay in Austin a little longer to wait out the shutdown.  The other main reason is that we hadn’t anticipated how cold the weather was throughout the southwest during January and February.  The reason we didn’t expect it wasn’t because it was unseasonably cold (it wasn’t) – it was that we really hadn’t done sufficient research ahead of time. Had we done a little better research and looked at the average temps in the area, we would have seen that most of New Mexico and Arizona get really cold during those months!  If you look at a map, you’ll notice that Austin is actually farther south, latitude-wise, than all of New Mexico and Arizona.  Once we realized this fact, it made more sense to delay going back out full-time RVing until we got into March when the temps get a little milder.  Karen and I are so thankful that Emma and Robin were willing to put up with us living in their house for all that time.  As we were getting ready to leave them to go back out RVing, we began feeling much of the same sadness as when we left MD back in October.  It’s the sadness you feel when saying goodbye to those you love and you’re not sure when you’ll next see them.

On March 17^th, we hopped back into the RV and began our slow meander mostly west and a little south toward the border of Texas and Mexico.  When we first get back into the RV after being away from it for months, we use the first week or so to get our RV “legs” again – to find our rhythm and our routines.  Part of that process for us is to just drive to an RV park that isn’t too far away and stay there for a 2 or 3 days, not because we’re particularly interested in checking out the town, but more just to take the days slowly, get the dogs used to being back in the RV, make sure we’ve put everything away, stocked up on food items we’re not sure will be available as we get into more remote areas, etc.

After spending a couple of days each in RV parks in Kerrville and Del Rio, we headed out to our first main stop — Marathon, TX.  As we drove from Del Rio toward Marathon, the unusual geography of the land and the sparseness of people definitely grabbed our attention.  The land became more desert-like with very few trees and very little grass.  There were times that we would travel for almost an hour without seeing houses, towns, and sometimes even other vehicles. The wide-open expanse of road in front of you as well as the land all around you leaves you slightly stunned…especially if you have primarily lived your life in the eastern part of the country or in very populated areas.

As we entered Marathon, we saw a sign that said the population is something like 1,000, but if you look it up online, the number appears to be closer to 430.  It is a very small and very remote western town. So, why would we opt to stay for a week in a town that only has an historic old hotel, tiny grocery store, pizza place, gas station, coffee shop, beer & barbecue joint, and a couple of gifty/artsy shops?  To be honest, the best way to describe why is that when Karen was looking at it online and reading about it, she just had a sense that it had a cool “vibe” about it. Visually, while it’s desert-like in its dryness and vegetation, it’s also beautiful in that you see mountains surrounding it not too far away.  At night, it’s so dark because of the lack of city lights, that we saw more stars in the sky than we’ve probably ever seen before.  Since the land is so flat and there are very few trees, we saw the sky stretch out all around us as far as we could see in all directions.  In addition, the lack of vehicle traffic makes it an incredibly peaceful and quiet area…probably the quietest town we’ve ever been in, too.  If you are looking to get away from it all and be in a place of peace, solitude, and raw beauty, come to Marathon.

Our first evening in Marathon, we saw a gravel road next to our RV park that went past a couple of houses and headed toward wide-open ranch land with mountains on the horizon, so Karen and I decided that it would be a good place to be able to walk our dogs. It was fortunate that we made that decision.  As we walked them down the road, we passed a car sitting at the beginning of a driveway of a house under construction.  We were surprised as we passed it that there was man and a woman actually in the car…and it made us wonder what they were doing there.  We decide to quickly walk our dogs past them and head further down the road.  When we reached the end of the road and had to turn around, as we approached their car again, the man and the woman got out of the car and started to approach us, which seemed strange at first, but then we could tell that their approach was motivated by wanting to greet our dogs.  The four of us started to chat and when we revealed that we were from Maryland, they laughed and said that they were from Maryland, too, but had moved to Marathon a little over 20 years ago.  Tom went to Good Counsel and graduated the year after Gary graduated from Springbrook.  Klemie grew up in the Baltimore area.  Who would have thought that the first people we would meet in a remote town in Texas would be from our home area!?

By the way, the reason that Tom and Klemie were sitting in their car as we were walking by is that they do property management for some AirBNBs along that same road.  Since Tom loves to take photos of the sunsets in Marathon, if they aren’t catching the sunset from one of those properties, then they’ll hang out in their car (if it’s a little chilly) waiting to catch the sun setting behind the mountains.  Well, we decided to join them in waiting for the sunset and it did not disappoint, as you’ll see from the photos I included in this blog post.  Anyway, we had such a nice time talking with them that we agreed we’d meet up with them again the next day at the same time.  Well, to make an already long story a little shorter, we ended up meeting up with them each evening for the entire week we were in Marathon.  They helped us learn more about Marathon and its history, they gave us recommendations of things we could do and see in the surrounding towns/cities, and they helped us prepare for our upcoming visit to Big Bend National Park.  But more important than any of that was that by the week’s end, we all realized how much we enjoyed the friendship that we had struck up in that relatively short time.  I know that Karen and I felt like they were a huge part of making Marathon into a more special and beautiful place for us.  We couldn’t imagine a better way for our RV journey to have begun.

My plan was to end my blog post after the last paragraph, but as I was out walking a trail this morning, I remembered one more “gift” that Tom and Klemie gave us.  They reminded us that as the weather gets warmer, we should make sure to watch where we are walking while we’re hiking on trails so that we can be on the lookout for snakes and scorpions.  Well, there goes paradise…and thanks for the nightmare material!

My next blog entry will be about our stay in Lajitas, TX, which is where we currently are as we make our visits into Big Bend National Park!