Dorothea Lange in Van Horn

Back in 1937, Dorothea Lange must have made her way through the Texas Mountain Trail region taking photos for her post at the Farm Security Administration.

This photo is dated June of that year, and titled, "A Texas Cattleman is distinguished by the type of boot he wears, Van Horn, Texas."  Thanks to the Library of Congress for making this photograph available to the public and for permission to share it with all of you!

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-USF34-017025-E]

Hot? How about a Raspa?

When the temperatures go up...and even when they don't...a fun place for sweet treats and interesting shopping is Murphy Street Raspa Co., just behind the Amtrak station in Alpine.
What's a Raspa?  Their website says, "A raspa is a shaved ice treat SLASH! snow cone. Raspa comes from the Spaniardian word “raspar”, meaning to scrape. Anyways, you hear it called a raspado in certain parts but we’re gonna keep it simple." and " So why don’t you just say shaved ice?" 'Cuz it sounds so...bleh..."
Can you tell this is a fun place?  Yes, it is.  They also serve ice cream, coffee, limonda and Mexican sodas, making it a perfect refuge from summer heat when you're shopping in beautiful downtown Alpine!

Hospitality Heroes: Big Bend Ranch State Park

Big Bend Ranch State Park staff members receive the Hospitality Heroes Award!

When we announced we were going to honor people in the region who went out of their way to deliver extrordinary service to visitors, this story from Facebook friend, Derrick Birdsall stood out and we felt was most deserving of recognition.  So early last month, we presented staff members of Big Bend Ranch State Park with our Hospitality Heroes Award:

o        "Over the first week of January, the staff and crew at Big Bend Ranch State Park came to the rescue! I was traveling with a group of friends in the Big Bend Country. We spent three days camping at the National Park and the plan was to spend three days at the State Park. At some point in the National Park, someone was able to hop online on their smart phone and see that the weather was deteriorating rapidly. We were all experienced hikers and campers, but the thought of spending three nights in zero degree weather was not appealing to us at all. Enter the Park staff and the bunkhouse! Barrett Durst and his staff went out of the way to make sure that we were safe and sound inside the bunkhouse while we rode out the epic storm. Fighting freezing temperatures (and pipes!), the staff kept our group warm and safe in what could have otherwise been horrific weather conditions outside. Three days that could have been quite uncomfortable were instead rather pleasant.

Barrett is the new head man at the Park and I'm sure that his energy and enthusiasm (he was working overtime and on his day off when we left) will help bring the Ranch the attention it deserves."

OOur Texas Mountain Trail Facebook page is here!  Join us!

O

Good Morning, Everyone!

To start out the work week after the Independence Day holiday, how about a sunrise over the Chihuahuan Desert, from Hwy 54 north of Van Horn?  This is along the El Cap to El Cap heritage bike route, on the way to Guadalupe Mountains National Park! 

Happy Independence Day!

Spend next July 4th in the Texas Mountains!  Visit our website for trip planning ideas, http://www.texasmountaintrail.com/

Have a great, safe holiday, everyone!

Independence Day Weekend!

click on the photo for a closer view!

More images from regional July 4th holiday weekend festivities...click here for a rundown of the region's best!  Next year, make plans for your holiday in the mountains, including Fort Davis' great Coolest July 4 Parade!

Have a Great Independence Day Weekend!

Check here for a rundown of Independence Day events in the region!  These photos are from Fort Davis' Coolest July 4th celebrations!

Rock Art of Big Bend Ranch State Park

Our region is full of traces of earlier life in the form of rock art, from Hueco Tanks in the west to Big Bend in the east.  Today's photo comes from Big Bend Ranch State Park from a place on the main road to Sauceda Ranch.  Here's a bit from their website about evidence of the archaeology and history of the park's land:


"Big Bend Ranch Sate Park offers some of the most interesting archeology and history in the region. There are presently over 500 documented sites on the park. Many of the known sites are located near water sources but sites also occur on upland areas away from any obvious drainages, springs or tinajas. There is both need and potential at BBRSP for additional archaeological research to be conducted.

 The earliest artifacts identified within BBRSP indicate that Native Americans traversed the area as early as perhaps 11,000 years ago, and continued to do so well into the 19th century. Native American site types attributable to the prehistoric era include open campsites, open camps associated with rock shelters, rock shelters, quarries, lithic scatters, Late Prehistoric Cielo complex (ca. A.D. 1250-1680) sites, rock art sites (primarily pictographs, or rock paintings) and special-use or ritual sites.
 Many pictographs that have been recorded within the Park are monochromatic red, black, or white. Bichrome and polychrome (red, black, yellow, white) figures also occur. The figures include humans, animals, insects, tally marks, double zigzags, hourglass chains, star patterns and various other abstract motifs. Most of these pictographs were probably painted during the Late Archaic (ca. 1000 B.C. - A.D. 1000) or Late Prehistoric (A.D. 1000 - 1535) periods. Other pictographs represented by human figures on horses, longhorn cattle, Spanish saddles and crosses date to the Protohistoric (ca. A.D. 1535-1700) period or later."

Read more from the park's website, here.

Oasis at Guadalupe Mountains National Park!

Smith Spring

There's a place--on of our favorite places, in fact--that's a respite from the heat and sun of the desert, and that's the Smith Spring trail in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  Here's what the park's website says about the trail:

"Begin this hike at the trailhead sign. Look for birds, mule deer, and elk as you walk this loop trail to the shady oasis of Smith Spring. Take a break here and enjoy the gurgling sounds of the tiny waterfall before continuing around to sunny Manzanita Spring. Scars from wildland fires of 1990 and 1993 are evident along the trail. The trail is rated moderate, with a round-trip distance of 2.3 miles. Allow one to two hours."



Manzanita Spring

 When you get to the spring itself, you'll feel shaded and cool.  And this summer, what's better than that!?!

For more photos of this neat trail, visit our flickr slideshow.  

For information about regional hiking opportunities, visit our hiking page!  www.texasmountaintrail.com/hike

Farmers Markets and Fresh Food!

A fruit tart at Marfa Farmstand



Van Horn built a special building on their main street to give produce vendors a permanent place to buy fresh food.





Produce at Marfa Farmstand



Hungry?  We've added a new page to our Texas Mountain Trail website to guide you to the farmers markets and artisanal food in the region.  From Alpine, to Marfa, to Van Horn and Fort Davis, to El Paso there are places to buy fresh food! 

The Tumbleweed Times, History for Kids and Families!

One of the fun aspects of our Texas Mountain Trail program--made possible through our association with the Texas Historical Commission--is our ability to send grant money to worthy projects in Far West Texas that engage folks with history.  Last year, one of the grant recipients was the Tumbleweed Times, sponsored by the El Paso County Historical Commission, the El Paso Independent School District and the El Paso Public Library.  Jeryl Marcus of El Paso wrote and edited the newspaper for schoolchildren all across our six county region in the westernmost portion of the state.

The Fun Page, click in the image to enlarge it!



The four-page, black and white monthly publication has the look, feel and format of a local newspaper. It presents information in a child-friendly, easy-to-read manner and is designed to capture the interest and imagination of both children and adults.

The back page of each issue has a review and retention section – or “Fun Page” with games, puzzles and other clever activities based on information that can be found elsewhere in the paper.  (Click on the large image to read a fun page...our favorite is the maze featuring Van Horn's museum cat!)

A website (http://www.tumbleweedtimes.net/) is a dynamic, colorful supplement to the newspaper. Readers can log on to the website in order to submit feedback, or to offer story ideas, suggestions, letters-to-the-editor, etc.

Both the online and printed versions include the sponsor information and logos as preferred by each of the following sponsor organizations: Texas Heritage Trails Program; Texas Historical Commission of El Paso; El Paso Independent School District; and the El Paso Public Library.

Distribution to elementary schools: Each student in grades three through five received his or her own free copy to read in class and take home to share it with parents, siblings, extended family and others. Teachers, principals and librarians received their own copies as well.

El Paso Independent School District

Alpine Elementary School

Ft. Bliss Post Exchange (PX)

Eagle Elementary School (Van Horn

Marfa Elementary School

El Paso International Airport:

El Paso Visitors and Convention Center

El Paso Public Library

and other locations across the region

Visit Tumbleweed Times' website for more photos and features! 

How about a sunrise to start the week? Big Bend Ranch State Park

 

Waking up to a wilderness sunrise is one of the joys of visiting our region.  Here's some photos of a remote campsite in Big Bend Ranch State Park in the morning, the Papalote Llano Nuevo campsite.  Large expansesof desert, mountains, sky and cacti.  Lovely!

Touring the Mission Trail

Have you wanted to tour El Paso's Mission Trail, but didn't want to drive yourself...or you wanted someone to share the incredible history of the area with you?  Now you can get aboard the Mission Trail Experience, a guided van tour to take you to all the neat places along the Trail.

Recently, we heard from the folks at the Mission Trail Experience, and they described their tour this way: 

Confined to plutonium-powered DeLoreans and unwieldy telephone booths, time travel is a dangerous and mischief-baiting activity. Instead, let history repeat itself as often as you can stand it with a tour on the Mission Trail Experience.

Choose between the following options: For $25, you get a ticket for the San Elizario Historic District Tour. For $40, you get a ticket for the entire 9-mile corridor, Mission Trail Tour. Mission Trail Experience walks history lovers through El Paso's past on tours that explore museums and offer eyes feasts of architecture dating back to the days of Spanish colonization. The three- to four-hour tour of the San Elizario historical district pauses at 17 sites of local and historical importance, such as the colonial Presidio Chapel and the Old County Jail. Embark on the four- to five-hour Mission Trail tour to venture farther afield, visiting the colonial Ysleta and Socorro missions, along with the San Elizario chapel and the Tigua Indian Cultural Center.

Both tours include lunch and allow sightseers time to peruse nearby art galleries and shops, ideal for purchasing souvenirs that can prove your whereabouts to jealous golden retrievers. Though not included in the value, the shuttle service connects the tours to eight local hotels ($8 charge), with rides available to and from the tour sites. See It! Feel It! Believe It!

For more information, visit the Mission Trail Experience's website, here.

Jack Comics' Mel, the Kangaroo Rat!

From time to time, we ask photographers and artists to share their work on the Daily Photo.  We featured Chris Ruggia's Jack Comics on June 16...and here's more from Chris!

Mel is a Kangaroo Rat. There are several Dipodomys species in the Big Bend area, and I never did settle on just one. There is a small species (Merriam’s - Dipodomys merriami) that lives where my story takes place, but I also gave Mel some of the more complicated social interactions from a larger species (Banner-tailed - Dipodomys spectabilis) that occurs a bit farther North.

 The hook that really got Mel’s character started was the idea that the small rodent is the biomass that drives much of the desert food chain. If they had human thoughts and feelings, I thought, they’d be bound to feel put upon, and so Mel’s conspiracy theories were born.

 Much of his character revolves around this resentment of predators. He schemes of ways to organize and fight back, and has several dream sequences with various fantasies of power.

 After I’d got started, Nature Conservancy biologist John Karges loaned me his copy of Special Publication #10 from the American Society of Mammalogists, Biology of the Heteromyidae, which outlined almost everything known to date about kangaroo rats.

 Mel’s interactions with his family (episodes 20, 21, and 30), the cheek pouches where he stores seeds for later use (episodes 42, 43, and 50), and even the detailed choreography of his fight over a burrow with another kangaroo rat (episode 33) all come from notes I took while reading this book.

 John Karges was consistently encouraging and helpful to me in developing Jack. In fact, he suggested the Grasshopper Mouse as a subject, which let to a whole comic book of its own. Be sure to thank him for me if you run into him!


Read more of Jack: Adventures in Texas' Big Bend at http://www.jackcomics.com/, or follow it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jackcomics

Thanks again to Alpine's Chris Ruggia for introducing his Big Bend characters of Jack Comics! 

Dining on the Sunset Limited

Eating in Amtrak's Sunset Limited's dining car allows travelers to meet and visit with fellow adventurers.  The staff will seat you, and to our pleasure, we dined with a family coming back from a trip to Big Bend.  Their mission--besides having a great time--was to work on a series of children's books starring Explorer Bear (pictured above).   The family was charming.  Here "EB" is seated in front of the herb roasted half chicken, with vegetable medley (orange and yellow carrots, red bell peppers, green beans) and rice pilaf.  We also ordered dessert, in our case, a cheesecakey, cold lemon-berry tart.  It was rich and satisfying for all four of us to share!   Visit this page to download a Sunset Limited Dining Car menu as well as the National Cafe Car menu.  (Check the right side of the page, under Downloadable Info.)

We enjoyed the full view of the scenery from our table in the dining car...notice the plates and fresh flowers on the table!    During dinner, my companions told me about taking the train from San Antonio to Alpine, renting a car and heading to Big Bend National Park, and all about their hiking adventures there.  They had a terrific time and are eager to come back to work on more adventures with Explorer Bear!

We'll continue our series on traveling to the region by train after our return trip from Houston to Alpine.  (You can also reach our region on Amtrak through the El Paso station, which has full baggage services, which means you can travel with your bike!)

From our seat on the Sunset Limited, Views of the Texas Pecos Trail region

Today, we continue our journey on Amtrak's Sunset Limited, and the views we saw from our seat aboard the train.  We boarded the train in Alpine in early afternoon, which meant we traveled past some of the Texas Pecos Trail's scenic attractions in the waning (beautiful) light of the day. 

View from the Pecos River Bridge

We didn't miss anything, because the crew made announcements about each of these spots in plenty of time to fish cameras out of our luggage.  Our first photo opportunity in our neighboring Texas Pecos Trail was the Pecos River Bridge...check this page for photos of the bridge and a summary of its interesting history.  There's another neat photo of it here.

Lake Amistad at sunset

 Our next photo opportunity was Lake Amistad at sunset!  This is a national recreation area administered by the National Park Service.  Their website describes the area this way: 
"Amistad NRA is the United States portion of International Amistad Reservoir, formed on the Rio Grande along the border of the US and Mexico. Amistad is known for excellent water-based recreation, camping and is surrounded by a landscape rich in prehistoric rock art, a vibrant border culture, along with a wide variety of plant and animal life."

Near Del Rio, the Rio Grande and beyond that, Mexico!

As the train rolled towards Del Rio, the Rio Grande came into view.  One of the things we like about train travel is the opportunity to see homes and ranches and farms not normally seen from the road.  In addition to the sights here; we saw lots of goats, cattle and horses; dogs frolicking in an orchard after dinner; a large family barbecue and party with balloons hung in every tree in the yard! 

In our Texas Mountain Trail region, you can board the train in El Paso or Alpine, and travel the Sunset Limited or Texas Eagle lines.

From our seat aboard the Sunset Limited, views from the train from Alpine to Houston, part 1

We boarded the train at the Amtrak station in Alpine on Saturday afternoon, as the town was celebrating at their Fiesta del Sol.  We hopped aboard the Sunset Limited, stowing our large suitcase downstairs, and made our way to our assigned seat on the upper level. 

We wanted to take this journey by train, because we wanted to experience something new to share with our travelers to the region, but also, we confess we wanted some time to decompress and think.  Driving or flying didn't seem as conducive to actually relaxing, so we opted for the train...besides, it was a great adventure!

One of the neat surprises--in addition to having plenty of space in our car, so it was relatively quiet--was the ability to really SEE the landscape outside.  We headed out of Alpine and saw the magnificent mountains on the way to Marathon, and of course, the beautiful cloudfilled, blue sky.  Yes, these were all taken from our seat aboard the train...next installment, the sights from the Sunset Limited in our neighboring Texas Pecos Trail region!

Today's post

Blogger is not letting us upload photos for you today...we'll post as soon as they let us!

New bike route: from cycle-friendly Hyatt Place to downtown El Paso and back!

Park your bike in your room!

 Our friends at GeoBetty.com put together an easy 12.8 mile (roundtrip) route from the very first Texas Mountain Trail cycle-friendly hotel, the Hyatt Place Airport El Paso, to downtown and back.

Starting Point:  Hyatt Place El Paso Airport, 6030 Gateway Blvd. E., El Paso, TX 79905
Phone 915-771-0022; Fax 915-771-0599, hyattplaceelpasoairport.com
Cycle-friendly features include: oversized guest rooms for safe storage of bikes, purchase freshly made breakfasts/lunches/snacks packs for cycling adventures , complimentary shuttle to airport and within 3 mile radius, 24 hour fitness center, outdoor pool, laundry/valet services, and more.

flowering cholla at Concordia Cemetery

Grave of gunfighter John Wesley Hardin

The route includes a swing by El Paso's historic Concordia Cemetery.  In the shadow of the Franklin Mountains, this is a wonderful stop, especially for history enthusiasts.  There's a special section for Buffalo soldier graves, for Chinese railway workers, for El Paso's earliest settlers, including famed gunfighter John Wesley Hardin!

 

Interior of the restored Plaza Theatre
 in downtown El Paso!



The El Paso Museum of Art is in the heart of downtown!



Downtown El Paso, the destination for this bike route offers so much to do!  There's a museum "campus" with so many great spots to visit--the Museum of Art, the Museum of History, a railroad museum, holocaust museum, science museum, and more, and more!



Historic Union Station still serves Amtrak...get off the train,
unpack your bike and head down this route
to the cycle-friendly Hyatt Place!



Dancers performing at one of El Paso's great downtown festival celebrations..here a Day of the Dead performance outside the El Paso Museum of History!

For more images from this route, visit our flickr slideshow, here.

For full route information from the geobetty.com website, click here. 

For a link to the Hyatt Place hotel, click here.

For regional cycling information for Far West Texas and the Texas Mountain Trail, including a full list of cycle-friendly hotels, click here.

River Road Bike Route!

Bike route on the River Road, Hwy 170, click on the photo for a closer view!

Some places capture the imagination more than others...and one of the best is the winding, exciting, Hwy 170, "the River Road" between Presidio and Terlingua.  Not only is it a great driving and motorcycling road, but it is a challenging, yet thoroughly satisfying bike route...check it out!  Much of the route cuts through the edge of Big Bend Ranch State Park, and slides by the Rio Grande. 

For more regional cycling information, visit: www.texasmountaintrail.com/bike