Today is Day 3 in exploring Big Bend. We decided to take the third road toward Big Bend Ranch State Park and check out Lajitas in the meantime. Oh! and our neighbor at the campground said they were going to check out a ghost town down this way so we decided we would too!
The Ghost town (Terlinqua) wasn’t much of a real ghost town – it’s still occupied but with some cool ruins (if you will).
We met a local here who lives in his Airstream, with only solar power, was almost blind, and water jugs out the gazzu on the back of a golf cart!
His story; however, was pretty fascinating. He was friends with the man that supposedly bought this town and he’d been here for 30+ years. He could tell you to the 1/10th inch of rain they’d had in the past few years and he remembered when there was actually a river running through here.
Some people you meet out here, you forget immediately. This man. I won’t forget. He had bottle-rim-thick glasses on. He was on top of a knoll, in the desert with an umbrella for protection from the sun, sitting at a picnic table using his laptop and he had a good story. He told us that when the doctors told him he was going blind, he knew he had to get something to live in and get acquainted with the space – so he could find his way around once he went blind. That was when he bought the Airstream and parked it in the desert – in this ghost town. His eyes were really dim. You could tell he wasn’t looking for anything from us, he was happy out here and trying to prepare for later health issues. Plus he really seemed to enjoy telling us his story. And we enjoyed hearing it!
There’s a coffee/internet cafe here, a general store type thing (touristy but check out the side room museum), some interesting bar stools, the original jail, and a lot of what I’d call cobblestone structures. Not to mention the mine cars that the men had to get into everyday to get down to the mine and the houses that the women and children built.
According to the plaque – TX has sealed over approximately 700 vacant mines. Can you see down there in the picture? It’s a deep dark hole.
And check this out! This is the actual cage men were lowered down into the mine with. This thing was sectioned in fours. I don’t know how many men squeezed into each quadrant – I can only imagine.
According to our “local” friend, most of the housing structures were made by the women and children. He said, “Some walls, you’ll notice, the rocks are laying one way and the other wall they might be laid in a whole different way. “That’s because one kid was workin’ on one wall and the other was workin’ on the other.”
I found the work intricate and amazing. No matter who laid/built it! There’s nothing “holding it together” other than rocks.
We made our way onto the graveyard which is part of the National Historic Registry and it’s pretty much the strangest I’ve seen yet. I mean, everywhere has their own customs, creations, etc. But I was quite confused on the coins.
I know nothing about Mexican-influenced burial traditions. You have to remember this land (just a stones throw from Mexico as we know it today) was immersed in Mexican culture many years ago.
Some graves were clearly marked, some as recent as 2018, some as old as 1902, and some only marked with metal crosses. Most had candles on them. Most had coinage laid on them. There were coins laying everywhere; at the entrance, on the graves, on the ground. Some markers were grand and some were less than. Some graves had a lot more coins than others. For me it was a reflective moment. I wondered if the graves with no names were bodies or bones that were found and someone was nice enough to bury them properly.
We arrive later at Lajita’s which has a convenience store/small grocery. It’s a golf course retreat area and the store is owned by the golf course folks. We just walked around, grabbed a couple drinks and took a couple pictures.
Oh! And we ran into some of our neighbors from Stillwell Farms RV park and chatted for a minute.
We stopped at the Rangers/Welcome Center and ask about Big Bend Ranch State Park. She was nice and explained the particulars of crossing “The Big Hill”. There are no photo’s or video’s that can explain this crossing. I don’t like roller coasters and this was one heck of a roller coaster! Roads that lead to nowhere until you crest the hill. It wasn’t for me! We got to the top, took in some cool scenery and headed back to camp. We’d had a great day!
Tomorrow we head out toward White Sands National Monument close to Alamagordo, NM.
We spent $88 on camping (4 nights) here in Big Bend at Stillwell Ranch RV park, we drove an avg of 200 miles a day (with a diesel heavy duty truck averaging 10 mpg at $2.79), we packed our breakfast and lunch and took water with us. Now it’s time to go boondock to offset costs!
Wait, wait, wait… 200 miles a day????? You have to remember, we didn’t want to fight the first come first serve in the National Park. We choose to stay 30 miles outside the park. Most of our day trips were about 50 miles one way. So, 60 miles round trip to our camper from Panther Junction and then 100 miles round trip to and from our trip for the day. And then we did a couple of complete side explorations each day, so yea, it was on avg 200 miles a day.
We’re headed toward Tucson, AZ to meet up with an old friend of Trapper’s that he’s not seen in 11 years. But, first I want to go see White Sands National Park and there’s some free BLM land there. Let’s go check it out!
This is quiet interesting. Love the story about the older guy who was going blind.
That gentleman was supper interesting to talk to.