Small towns, big stories!

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We stopped in tonight at a town called Marathon, pronounced "mair-ee-then" it has got to be one of the cutest towns! It is the turn off on hwy 90 to go to big bend, which is another 80 miles south, they get a lot of travelers stopping on their way through. Marathon has some great little restaurants and shops but there are also a few empty building like an old soda shop and a gas station that are just begging to brought back to life! There's a former pump station that is now turned into a thriving bar. There's one main road with some good little restaurants and a fancy motel called the Gage motel and restaurant. It was beautiful, we heard they throw quite the weddings! You should google it!
We stayed at this adorable little motel and rv park just down the road from the Gage, we walked the short distance to town and tried to get some photos but it was too dark. These towns are pitch black, they don't have street lights or any other bright lights for that matter! We will go back in the morning for more photos I just couldn't wait to tell you about this gem of a town!

Before arriving here I've been trying to figure out Big Bend, haven't have much success until we drove through a tiny town called Sanderson. We saw a big sign stating "Big Bend Information", what a relief! I was excited to finally get some solid information from someone! And boy did we! We spent probably an hour learning and hearing amazing. Stories of the old west, when train robbers really did rob the trains, when men got hung for stealing a cow but only put in jail for shooting a man and how cowboys used to ride through town shooting out the lamps! I stood there listening to story after story about this old Texas town I felt like I was watching an old western movie on tv! It felt so surreal! This man had grown up in marathon and raised his children in Sanderson. He had such amazing hands-on insight on big bend and the surrounding areas. He wears many hats in this town, including the author of the towns newsletters, he started in 2010 and has typed up 60 to date. I grabbed a few, they are so cool because he takes stories and photos from the county library archives, does research on them and then prints them into these cute little short newsletters. A fun fact I didn't know was that Terrell county is the cactus capital of Texas. They are the crossroads for many of the different cacti environments. I've attached a photo of the poster he gave us. If you're interested in reading these stories of the old west he has posted his newsletters online on the Terrell county Facebook and the website: www.terrellmuseum.info

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my exciting day in these adorable Texas towns! Tomorrow is Big Bend! (Reception will be spotty again, not sure how often I'll have a chance to blog)

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Photos

Welcome!
I'll take better photos tomorrow morning.

The fireplace at the Marathon motel and RV
We are going to go sit by this fire and watch for shooting stars after I post this blog! :)

image
This is our campsite! They've tried to revive the origins signage.

This was a cute grocer we walked to with delicious cherry cookies (I'm going to be trying to find a comparable recipe when we get back to Houston!)

The Famous Burro Bar
This was the old pump station.

Comments

[Eliot]

I bet the stars out there are incredible. Has Philip tried astrophotography yet? I'm hoping to experiment next summer with that.