Marathon, Texas and More Big Bend

We just left Marathon, TX and while I already posted a little bit about the park I didn't mention Marathon much. This was a very, very small (population 420) town and had it's own little charm.  Ironically, there is a hotel, The Gage Hotel, in the middle of the 2-4 block downtown area that is quite fancy and has a long history in this town.  The hotel has a restaurant with a pricey menu and apparently enough of a clientele to keep it going.  Across the railroad tracks are the Gage Gardens, which are maintained by the hotel and are quite lush and beautiful especially when everything is so parch in the desert.

There are a few restaurants, a tiny little grocery store (3 aisles) and a post office.  The train passes right through town and apparently used to make a stop in Marathon, but doesn't anymore.

The place where we stayed was right on the edge of town and a cute little place in it's own quirky way.  The owner, Danny, was super knowledgeable about astronomy and Diego and the girls spent quite a bit of time with him out at night with his super cool telescopes.
The days were serious sun, very low humidity and cool breezes.  The evenings were quite cold, dropping into the 30's one night.



We went into Big Bend National Park on the weekend with Diego.  We had planned to cross into Mexico for lunch, but as we pulled our passports out we realized that Luna's expired a few months ago :(  Oh well.  We took off to explore the park.  It's amazing how close Mexico is and how easy it is to just walk across the river.



We saw Mexican citizens traveling back and forth on their horses.  Mostly they were leaving their "artistic creations" on the trails for the gringos to find.  Our little Sofia gringa found one that she had to buy, so we are proud owners of a scorpion twisted out of metal.



If you look closely in the photo above you can see all the little animals the Mexican people in this area make out of wire and beads and leave them on the trail with a "donation" can.  Then they travel back across the Rio Grande to sit and watch.

Rio Grande in the background

Rio Grand in the background

We hiked to the hot springs in the southeast part of the park, but were disappointed to find a strange man-made looking hot tub area.  I'm assuming the hot springs are there and the park built up the area around them.  If you're in the park, feel okay about skipping this one.

We did see some cool petrogyphs and hieroglyphs on the way though.

On the way to the hot springs along the Rio Grande.