Day 22 - Marfa to Marathon

First order of business, patch tubes. Jerry and I patched four between us. Don't want another flat and no spare tube.

Hey, not much wind this morning, should make good time. And we did, we were in Alpine before we knew it, mostly down hill and we had changed direction slightly so what wind there was seemed to help.

After a trip to the local Alpine hardware store for some extra tubes it was off to lunch: Chinese buffet. Gotta get those calories. And already half way done, looks like an easy day.

Wind! Argggh, another headwind. Not as strong as yesterday, well, maybe at times, but I'm getting sick if these head winds. Luckily today was a shorter day and the wind didn't hit us until later. It was a chore, but we made Marathon in pretty good time.

Really nice motel, the Marathon RV Park and Motel, a little more than we've been paying, but nice and with a functioning windmill, I can hear it doing its thing while I lie here typing, kind of soothing. There is also a historic hotel in town that's really fancy. Thriving town this Marathon. Wonder why.

Lots of commotion. The train just blasted by across the street sounding its horn, I guess that explains the ear plugs on the night stand. Also, lots of lightening to the north. I went outside to watch the show a couple of times tonight. Nice, from a distance.

A discussion on our route: We had originally planned on leaving Van Horn and camping in Kent, then another day to Fort Davis, then another to Marathon. Acting on Bethany's advice, we went through Marfa to Marathon. Bethany explained that there was no where to get water in Kent since the store there closed. The new route saved us a day and we got to go around the Davis Mountains instead of over them.

This change has resulted in another benefit in that we missed some pretty nasty weather (excepting the wind of course). We would have been in Fort Davis tonight. All of that lightening to the north is on top of Fort Davis where it is rumored that there was golf ball sized hail today. Boy, I'm glad we missed that.

We've been traveling through regions under severe thunderstorm warnings for three days now and we've been lucky. Hope that holds. The weather report calls for three more days of severe thunderstorm warnings and continuing strong easterly winds.

Maybe I'll check the Amtrak schedule. I vaguely remember promising that if I had a choice between being stupid or being safe I'd to choose safe.

Del Rio awaits three days out, beyond the troublesome weather.