Tumblewagon

Campground Review: Marathon Motel and RV Park

Nathan posted this in Places

Long shadows cast the deepest blue traces across an otherwise dusty, orange landscape as the sun tucks in behind the Del Norte Mountains for the night. It’s desert country here, and the air is free and clear from any trace of cloud cover, as it has been for the past month that we’ve stayed at the Marathon Motel and RV Park. We came for a week or two, with the intention of checking out nearby Big Bend National Park, but ended up staying an entire month in the sleepy town of approximately 400 residents.

The town is truly a gem, a last lonely small town tucked deep into what wilderness America has left, on the far end of the great wide state of Texas. Sleepy adobe houses dot the landscape. The local school has a student body of 43 or so, K-12. A soda shop is open most mornings to sell breakfast tacos and burgers after noon. The Burrough Bar is alive for the moment, weekends only. The Gage Hotel, a mainstay and one of the only reliably open businesses in town, rakes in the customers despite incredibly high prices.

Every hour or so a train will come barrelling through town, only just across the street from the RV park itself, throwing its whistle widly into the air to warn any townsfolk who might be stumbling home from the bar to make certain they don’t have railway beneath their feet. It’s loud, for sure.

That is one of this parks only downsides. The owner of the park has done an amazing amount of restoration and fixing-er-up, including redoing all of the rooms in the motel aspect of the park, as well as adding a large adobe courtyard, complete with fireplace, in the middle of the entire park, where you can go and mingle with other guests while you sit in handmade wooden rocking chairs and enjoy the nightly fires, free wood provided and as much as you can burn.

The bathrooms are exceptionally clean, and even come with free soap and shampoo; more of a hotel experience than one you might expect from an RV park.

There is also a commercial-free radio station that broadcasts out of the park, as well as a community organized TV station. The radio station plays everything from tried and true country music classics to more eclectic modern fare like Band of Horses, with a wide range in between. The TV station basically plays a loop of a single movie every day. Some days you might get lucky and catch a rare treat like Paris Texas (partially filmed in the park). Other days you might be watching Sandra Bullock all day.

The staff is amazingly cordial and helpful, and we became good friends with the owner. Tristan followed him around like a second shadow and everyone in the park came to love him and see him as a part the scenery.

Finally, there’s a cafe right in the park, open most days through lunch, where you can grab a coffee or enjoy a tasty meal under the desert sun. Town is also less than a mile away, so walking in to grab groceries or a meal or a beer is simple fare.

This town is a truly magical place, rare in our modern age, and highly recommended by this traveler.

Photo galleries, video and more blog posts about Marathon TX and the Marathon Motel and RV Park are available here.