Silver City, NM

We took the Pete V Domenici Memorial Highway or State Highway 9 from El Paso to Silver City. I think we only saw one other car and two border patrol cars during this scenic two hour drive. The desert out there is different than what we're used to in Arizona or Utah. There is tall grass and big globe like cactus trees that made us feel like we were in a Dr. Seuss book. Jake was reminded of something he read that talked about the early American Indians and how the desert grass was so lush that it grew tall enough to reach the belly of their horses. There is hardly any land like this left because we graze every open pasture nowadays. We drove into a little town called Columbus where we stopped at a pawn shop. The man asked us if we had anything in our car we wanted to trade in and we told him that we didn't really have anything valuable with us. We noticed his coin collection and told him we had was a fifty cent piece that an old man in Texas had given us for change. He said if it was older than 1963 or something like that, then he would want it... It wasn't that old. 40 more miles down the road we ran into the next little town. I like the back roads.

When stayed with a nice couple in Silver City for 3 or 4 nights and enjoyed a day trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. It was a windy, 45 mile adventure through the mountains and our car started to smell really bad. We thought it was going to explode, but it turns out Jake was just riding the brakes too much. Scary, and then funny. The cliff dwellings were pretty awesome. It was amazing to see caves up in the sides of huge cliffs that were perfectly in tact and that had been homes of the local people hundreds of years ago.

Then we took a hike along the continental divide. The weather was perfect and the sights were breathtaking. Jake found some interesting pieces of cactus that were dead and dried out. He thought they would make some cool looking art pieces, like a hat rack or maybe even some kind of percussion instrument. I started to notice some pretty pieces of white quartz scattered among the other rocks. My mom is a lover of rocks with stripes or sparkles or ones that are just in a neat shape. So Jake carried cactus on his shoulders and I carried rocks in all my pockets the entire way down the mountain. We are such weirdoes. And my husband is so good looking!

There was also a crazy event that occurred while we were in Silver City but Jake tells the story sooooo much better than I do. So once again, I'll see if I can talk him into sharing his creative writing skills and do just one post for us! Otherwise, all you blog readers get another mediocre Cody story.

El Paso

That's right folks. Almost outta TEXAS. We're actually in Utah now, but still playing catch up with our stories. There wasn't too much going on in El Paso, just a kid playing in the car wash and having the time of his life while his mom yelled at him. It was really cute but he was camera shy.

The border between here and Mexico is pretty crazy as you all know. It's weird that three fences with some barbed wire on top is what separates our countries. On the other side we could see Mexican military sitting in the back of pick up trucks patrolling the fence, each holding enormous machine guns. Ah!

We had a pretty good time in El Paso. We met an old Mexican gentleman through couchsurfing who offered up his entire apartment to us while he stayed with his sister across town. He was a really nice guy who cooked up garlic soup and gave me a personal cha cha lesson in his living room. On our way out of town we passed through Sunland Park, NM and saw our first horse race ever. It was a ton of fun. Little people being helped up onto huge horses. Freshly groomed dirt. Jake in a funny hat. We loved it. We sat near the end of the race with the rest of the crowd and it was alright. During the second race we stood over by the starting line where nobody else was and WOW! That was so much more exciting. The jockeys were a screamin and mud was a flyin.

JOHNNY - Cody's side of the story since Jake isn't much of a blogger

We met Johnny in Marathon, Texas. He is an old cowboy, about 6 foot 5 and 160 pounds. His leathery weathered skin, dusty boots and gallon hat seemed strong yet gentle. His eyes had a permanent squint from 60-something years of living in the sun. His demeanor was welcoming and awe inspiring and I just wanted to stare at him whenever he was in the same room. He looked like he had a thousand stories to tell, and we were lucky to hear a few of them.

This man, born by the river in a hippie colony has never once paid for rent because he has either lived in nature or been too good of a friend to consider him as a tenant. Once he even moved himself onto another man's piece of property and got the city to dig him a well. Then, he got electricity out to the property. When the owner found out he was so baffled and impressed that Johnny had the guts to do such a thing on someone else's property, so the man just let him stay. The owner was intrigued and wanted to see what Johnny would do next.

Johnny also spent six years living in Mexico down in Copper Canyon among the Tarahumara Indians. This white, english speaking guy became great friends with them and helped sell their crafts in the United States during a year of awful drought. From infancy, he has never eaten meat or anything cooked with lard. He lives off of the land and is his eyes are the clearest blue I've even seen. He told us of hot summers down in Terlingua, Texas when he and friends would spend all day down in the ground of an old mine, drinking prickly pear wine and making music.

This man can build, weld, create whatever his imagination presents. He uses trash and whatever he finds left on the side of the road to make a new car, a house, a 40 foot tall piece of artwork, whatever. He doesn't have any one job, but a plethora of connections and people pay him for his skills. He's constantly moving around so he doesn't really have one place to call home. He's just... from the desert. When we met him, he had four trailers set up in a square with a kind of makeshift courtyard in the middle. He invited us over and made us apple fritters.

He's so kind and full of life that everyone who meets him walks away realizing that life could always be a little bit more exciting than how we're living day to day. We met another couch surfer 400 miles down the road who had spent some time in Marathon earlier that month. When we asked her if she had met Johnny she placed her hands over her heart and got this dreamy gaze in her eyes as if she were looking at adorable puppies chasing their tails. Even with an age difference of 50 years, she had fallen in love with the idea of a person out there in the world doing, loving and being how Johnny is living.

Marathon, TX

We took Highway 90 from San Antonio and traveled 328 miles to my favorite place (I think, thus far) on our road trip. We contacted a host through couchsurfing who said we could definitely stay at his home/hostile/woofing camp for a couple nights. He was actually in Missouri on a job but he gave us a phone number and told us that the Goat Queen would hook us up. ? ? ? We actually drove right through the middle of Marathon and passed it up because we didn't realize what we were driving through was a town. We had to turn around twice (yes, we passed it up twice) and then we had to search for a human being because the display of addresses is definitely not a priority in Marathon. We found a guy feeding some sheep and asked him if he knew where our host Gill lived. He said something like, "Oh yeah. He lives on the other side of the rail road tracks. Just look for some funny houses. We call it Gillville."

Nobody was anywhere to be found when we arrived so we took the liberty of showing ourselves around. Above is Gill's house. It looks pretty decent... and I guess it was the nicest structure of the bunch. Still, it wasn't really sealed anywhere so we had freezing cold breezes at night and lots of dust everywhere. Indoors it was set up hostile style so Jake and I were in bunk beds but since it was the "slow" time of year, we weren't sharing our quarters with anyone else. The kitchen, or sink and hot plate, were outdoors just on the other side of the house and there was actually a radio that picked up one weird radio station.

The room pictured above is made out of soda cans, mud, an old satellite dish, and blankets soaked in concrete. Yes, people sleep in here during "tourist season." If you're traveling through Texas (especially on a bike), there aren't too many options when it comes to getting across the western half of the state. I'm guessing that the train used to stop in Marathon back in the day which gave the town a starting point. Now, offering a local pub, it has become a resting point for many people journeying across the desert. After trekking across TX for a few days, people will take whatever shelter they can get. For only $2 a night you can bunk up in Gillville. It's totally worth it since they have running water in the kitchen sink and community bathtub.

Recently a man who does beautiful rock work moved into Gillville and he's been helping build these structures. The room above actually goes down into the ground about 12 feet. It's just a big egg shaped room with a staircase and nothing more. Below is a tiny room that has nothing to do with dance. It was just somebody's artwork. The other rooms in the background were pretty much six pieces of plywood nailed together to form a box.

The first time we looked in the building pictured above, it smelled really, really, really bad. It was like a combination of multiple animals feces. There was a canoe upstairs and a bare mattress covered in filth. Obviously nobody had been in this room for a long time... WRONG. Later that day we met the guy who lived there. He pretty much smelled like his room mixed with the body odor of a man who hasn't showered in weeks. He was one of the most open, honest and interesting people I've ever met. He had tattoos all over his face and graced us with the story of how they came to be there. In short, he was inspired by the book Moby Dick and he got the tattoos to "cut all the bull$h!+ out of his life." Right away his parents disowned him and there were other people that wouldn't give him the time of day. He says the people he meets who don't judge him by his face are always the ones worth getting to know. Jake and I really enjoyed talking with him... outside of his bedroom. The picture below is a water storage unit. They have a windmill that pumps their water from a pretty deep well.

Above is another decent structure-- the community bathroom. There wasn't a water temperature control so you either got FREEZING cold water or BURNING hot water. So I understood a little better why a lot of people around here stunk! We didn't shower while we were here. It was scary enough walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night with no unnatural light coming from anywhere and the fear of stepping on a rattle snake. The structure they built in the picture below is a "steam room." Three or four people can sit in there and throw water on some hot rocks that sit in the middle of the room. You can remove the eagle on top to allow excess steam to escape. High class stuff...

Jake and I took a day trip down from Marathon to Big Bend National Park. We didn't actually go into big bend because we didn't feel like spending $25 just to drive through and not camp, but our friend went and took a couple pictures. Below is a picture of a nice guy we met on our way down there in a city called Terlingua, TX. He lives in his car and travels around visiting his hippie friends all over the west. He played us some music and asked us if there were any single women up in Marathon who didn't look too bad. People in Terlingua are living in weird underground solar structure things too. We also met another old cowboy named Johnny. He was something else! Jake is such a better writer than me, I'll see if he wants to add a post about dear old Johnny. Otherwise, I'll get around to it soon.

Population of Marathon, TX: Roughly 300.

Percentage of crazy residents: About 300.

Annual rainfall: 11 inches.

Average income: $21,719.

Cost to purchase 1 acre of land: $300.

No job listings in Marathon at this time.