Prada Store in West Texas

Tuesday, 4 Dec

As forecast, we woke up to a sunny, 36 degrees.  In planning today, we decided it was time to play some golf after taking several days off to enjoy Big Bend NP.  Dan, of Always on Liberty, filled us in on the golf course in Lajitas.  He described it as an engineering marvel - hitting tee shots across canyons.  A very beautiful course, which helped or explain why they are so proud of it.

Side note:  we learned from Dan that Big Bend National Park was so visited during Spring Break earlier this year that they closed the park.  All the facilities - campgrounds, parking areas, trails - were jammed full of people enjoying the park.

The closest golf course to Lajitas, other than the ritzy one, was the municipal course in Marfa, TX, over two hours away.  Plugging in the destination into Google Maps offered three suggested routes.  We took the slightly longer one that went along the Rio Grande River through Big Bend Ranch State Park.  It was a beautiful drive.  At one point, we had to navigate a 15% grade.  No problem - is was just a slightly longer version of the entrance road to Soleil Laurel Canyon at home.  And the Texas roadside picnic area was a little different:

As we exited on the west side of the state park, we joined the Texas Mountain Trail, which was indicated as a scenic road in our Rand McNally paper atlas.  The highway went through small towns like Persido, TX.  As we drove north, we saw several roadrunners in the rod, and along the road.

The Marfa Municipal Golf Course was pretty basic 9 hole course.  It looked like it was an initiative years ago to try and draw people to Marfa, which is located pretty much away from anything and everything.  The fairways were Texas hard, with very short grass.  We saw lots of scat, and learned that a herd of about 50 antelope graze on the golf course daily.  The staff has to run them off every day.  All we got to see was the scat.

Because of the dry conditions, the course is cart path only all the time.  We decided to walk it.  The pull carts looked like they had been repurposed from Goodwill about 15 years ago.  Kris’ pull cart broke in half on the 5th hole.

What the course did have going for it was well cared for greens.  And we both enjoyed long drives.  Kris’ average on the day was 177 yards, with three drives over 190 yards.  Darrell had two drives of 250 yards, and several in the 220-230 range.  A challenge of hitting the ball so far was trying to find it in the rough.  Darrell avoided the water traps in the two par threes (which Kris found), and almost eagled a par 5, to make the turn 5 strokes up.  Kris played better on the second nine, avoiding the water traps.  This course had concrete basins about 1 foot deep filled with water where a normal course might have a sand trap.  

Darrell also played better on the back nine, racking up three more birdies to finish 3 strokes up on the back nine, for a 79 on the round.

We had the course all to ourselves for most of the day.  We might have played it in about 3 hours, but Kris’s walk back to the pro shop to get another pull cart, and looking for balls in the rough took extra time.  We still finished in under 4 hours.

Playing golf in Marfa was all we had planned when we left Lajitas this morning.  After finishing golf, we had to figure out where we were going to spend the night.  After looking at several options, we picked the Van Horn RV Park in Van Horn, TX, about 74 miles away.  As we left Marfa on US 90, there was a sign saying “No Services Next 74 Miles”.  Since we were driving US 90, we did have cell service.  About halfway to Van Horn, there was the small town of Valentine, which had no services any more.

We did pass a Tethered Aerostat Radar System (blimp with a large under mount radar) on it’s mooring about 400 yards from the highway.

Just outside of Valentine, almost exactly halfway between Marfa and Van Horn, we came upon the Prada store.  

Around the Prada store, the fence seems for be a place for people to leave padlocks and other trinkets.

US 90 is very, very straight for long stretches – some of the straightest road that Sprinty has been on.

Tonight, we are staying at Van Horn RV Park near I-10.  Based on the unique shape of the check-in building, the park may have been a KOA at one time.  Nice, level pull-through site, and we enjoyed getting the fine Texas dust off in their showers.  And we are enjoying good connectivity to get caught up from several days of spotty connectivity.

Sunset photo: