Our honeymoon “plan” was to pick a couple of must-see places and make a list of nearby spots that might be fun and just kind of wing it. That being the case, we were bound to have a day which didn’t work out as swimmingly as the rest. Today was that day.
We did have a nice room service breakfast at the Camino Real and I’m pretty sure I drank all of the coffee in the joint, and we poked around downtown El Paso a little more. El Paso, like San Antonio, is a town that seems to have missed out on the glory days of the eighties. That’s a good thing as most of the old 1920’s and 1930’s architecture remains somewhat intact. The central post office, for example, was a magnificent example of the era. It had a stained-glass domed ceiling, tiled floors with mosaics of famous stamps, rows and rows of old post office boxes, and none of those annoying self-service stations which always seem to take longer than standing in the line.
We hit the road fairly early as we had three hours of driving as well as a time zone switch ahead of us. I-10 isn’t the most scenic route by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we made good time even with having to stop at a border patrol check point. There were some lovely mountains, but they were all not only south of the road, but south of the U.S. border as well, so we had to admire them from afar.
We got in to Ft. Davis to find our hotel, a combination soda shop, cafe, gift shop, and B&B, closed for the sabbath. Fortunately, the clerk at the hotel next door (a significant chunk of Ft. Davis’ commerce comes in the form of lodging) told us she’d heard that our innkeepers often left keys in the mailbox on the side of the building, and so they did. It was a little surreal entering a closed soda shop from the side door. The store was literally across the stair rail from the stairs up to the rooms.
Pictured: Exactly what I just described.
We were struck by how cute and touristy Ft. Davis when we drove through on the way up to Balmorhea, but we hadn’t really paid attention to just how little there was there. So, we decided to pop down to Marfa for dinner. We tried the pizza. The pizza wasn’t particularly good. We drove back to Ft. Davis.
On the plus side, there’s a neat little organic-ish grocer called the Stone Village Market which had a nice selection and a very laid-back vibe that was missing from what little we’d seen of Ft. Davis. The market is part of a “tourist camp” and it’s likely where we’ll stay should we decide to stay in Ft. Davis again. Which, to be honest, we probably won’t, but never say never, right?
Once we got over the weirdness of being the only people in the building, the room is perfectly adequate. There’s a nice view (see the banner image), it’s a historic building with heavy wooden beam floors, and the bathroom is quite nice. It smells a little funky, but the windows open, so there’s that.
Decent bed, slept well, ready to move on.
-RK