Yep, in Presidio there were no campgrounds available. It might have something to do with the entire town bristling with Homeland Security and Immigration stuff. We didn’t care as we hadn’t had real beds for nearly a week. And while the Three Palms wasn’t anything one would choose for a honeymoon location, it suited us just fine. Funny how perspective changes after being in a tent several nights in a row.
The next morning was going to be a 60 mile haul to Marfa with NO services. As in not.a.thing. out there. I decided to ride the second half so I went in the van with Joe for the first half. It was fun – we stopped and looked at historical markers, which incidentally were places that geocaches had been placed. We went to Shafter, a former mining town which is now nearly a ghost town. In its heyday it was very lively, with a ranch resort and everything. A guy named Milton Faver ran it all – kind of the ‘mercury baron’. Once the mines closed, everything else did too.
I look at these ruins the way we look at barns in our area – those standing out in the middle of a field overgrown by vines of poison ivy or kudzu. Same thing – abandoned but still resembling the structures they once were.
There was a geocache in there somewhere but I didn’t have a signal and didn’t feel terribly adventurous with all the broken glass and thorns.
At a couple of places along the route (this time in a cemetery), there were these hinged boxes inside of which were the local ‘historical’ information boxes. Obviously these are done this way to preserve the contents. They hadn’t done such a great job, photos being what they are. But by peering closely, we could get a sense of how much had changed. There was also a little museum, open to the public and the elements that chronicled the lives of a couple of families that had been founders of the town. It was all very ‘ghost town’ ish, but from the 60’s and 70’s — not the 1800’s!
It doesn’t matter what kind of marker one uses out here, the elements get to it pretty quickly. This small one on the left was poignant – a child. Imagine burying a child and then the town closing down and having to leave. Sigh.
We set up a water stop at about 30 miles, and waited for riders to come in. Once Mike arrived and rehydrated, I jumped on my bike and rode with him to Marfa. The scenery was … as it had been for days. One notable exception:
And, worried I might think it was a pile of rocks later, I took this on the fly:
At one historical marker with a cache Joe found his first one. I could see him starting to get interested in the idea, so I let it simmer …
kbikeva 