Adios Terlingua, TX!

 Feb. 6, 2022 

Tonight is our last night at the Tin Valley Retro camp. It feels bittersweet to be moving on tomorrow morning. This place has been a great first place to test out our “RV living” wings. I will miss the views - 360 degrees of mountains, each time I look I see something new or different that I hadn’t noticed before. Our God is an amazing creator! As I type this I look out the back window admiring the sunset, the sun has already sunk below the mountains but there is an orange ribbon that fades to yellow that fades to light blue and if I look out the side window these is a streak of light pink in the clouds. (Sigh.) If anyone is looking for a remote, peaceful, rugged and beautiful place to visit I’d recommend Terlingua, TX. The Tin Valley is great and can be found on AirBnB or there are other places. We’ve been up to Terlingua Ranch a few times for laundry, water, showers and the Bad Rabbit Restaurant. Their staff is so very friendly! There ranch would be a great choice too. 

In the week since I’ve last written we: 

-Hiked our longest hike yet: 4.6 miles, Window Trail in the Chisos Basin. (Our goal is to be able to hike 6 miles by the end of our trip.)

-Drive 3 hours round trip to Porters, the local grocery store, for our groceries! 

-Everyone but Gabriella went over a week without a shower! Thankfully we didn’t do anything to make us too gross. (I bet you’re wondering why we didn’t shower? Keep reading.) 

-Hunkered down in the RV for 2 very cold days and nights! The highs were in the 30s the lows were in the low 20s and there was freezing rain! 

This is where the inability to shower comes in - the water lines at Tin Valley froze 3 days in a row! There was no flush toilet and no shower. While the lines didn’t freeze last night there wasn’t water until this afternoon. 

-Paid $10 for everyone to get a shower this morning at Terlingua Ranch and it was AMAZING! 

-Found flint (a type of rock) on a couple different walks. 

-Planned out the rest of our trip and made reservations for the second half. 

-Enjoyed worshipping at the Terlingua Community Church for a second time.

-Had our snack at the local restaurant The Bad Rabbit purchased for us by a kind older woman from church. 

Book of the week: Float 

One of Tomas’ favorite books is Float by Laura Martin. He has been after me to read it for many months now. This week I read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is about some 12 years who attend summer camp. The boys in the story have some Risk factors that make them a danger to themselves and others at times. The book is a fun and entertaining middle grade novel. Inspired by the book we made Hobo Pies this evening, just as the boys do on their last night of summer camp. We also made camp donuts, but were driven inside quickly because the wind was picking up and it was COLD. (I know, not IL cold, but still uncomfortably cold for a campfire.) 

 

Tomorrow we head to near Los Cruces, New Mexico. We will spend 3 nights and 2 full days there. I am looking forward to checking out White Sands National Monument. We’ll let you know what we think after our visit. 

Ester