Photo Gallery: Marathon Revisited
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- I would like to live in this little shack one day. Or just admire it from the road.
Photo Gallery: La Loma Del Chivo, a Hostel in Marathon, Texas
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- My good friend Jorge.
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- Our own private mariachi band!
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- The band assembled and ready to go Mexican polka on our asses!
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- Jorge has the band all to himself
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- Guardian snake at the hostel
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- The sun sets.
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- Hostel bed
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- Guitars and rocking chairs, Marathon is just oozing cowboy.
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- Composting toilet out back.
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- Vegetables
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- The upstairs "observatory" loft type place you can sleep literally under the stars
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- The train passes through town
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- Olivia cutting up freshly picked veggies for a community pasta dinner
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- The man who owns the hostel and all of the surrounding area lives in this little gem.
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- Another experimental building structure on hostel grounds.
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- Desert sky and water
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- Chairs apparently being borrowed from the local high school.
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- The bath house.
Easily one of the best hostels I’ve ever visited, this place is situated on a piece of land owned by a local pilot who lets people live in the hostel for free provided they work to improve the lands and buildings. He also gives people permission, at times, to build houses on his land, provided they’re interesting ideas to him — you won’t find any Cape Cods or ranch style house, but as the photos show, there are plenty of interesting structures on the property. Not to mention that bicyclists coming through can stay the night at the hostel absolutely free!
And there are always a pack of interesting characters gathering for drinks or to make food in the outdoor kitchen. I would have to say that this is probably the best way you can come to Marathon and dive right into the local population and lifestyle.
Photo Gallery: Marathon Coffee Shop
When we first stayed in the small town of Marathon, a grid of streets not a mile square along Highway 90 and the Texas Eagle train line, the single largest disappointment was that the local coffee shop was closed for business. Rocking chairs on the front porch, the hand-painted sign, rustic horse bridles hanging from a wooden roof; everything about the place whispered happiness to me.
Apparently the woman who owned the place was never around to run it, though, and good help is hard to find in the middle of the desert.
It was the morning of the Superbowl in which Pittsburgh would defeat Arizona for its 6th Superbowl win when I was enjoying a drink in front of a bar just down the street when a wandering Mexican man approached me and asked if he could bum a cigarette. A few hours later, after meeting his girlfriend and learning that the two of them were traveling through Texas, they had to leave, to keep on down the highway. To my great surprise, several hours later Jorge – the Mexican man – came back into the bar. “We’re going to open the coffee shop back up and live here.”
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- Marathon Coffee Shop
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- Tristan's favorite seat, an old leather girl in the corner
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- Boots for sale
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- Enjoy the front porch whether the coffee shop is open for business or not.
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- Watch the world drive by on Highway 90.
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- El Camino
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- Marathon Coffee Shop
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- Olivia preparing for her first taste of the Marathon Coffee Shop veggie panini
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- Mustached locals share lunch.
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- Mexican Cokes and veggie paninis
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- Tristan says what he's thankful for before we dig in, a family tradition.
It’s that type of amazing draw that keeps people in this town for years when they hadn’t even realized they were going to be passing through in the first place.
We’ve now eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner at the coffee shop. A blackboard boasts breakfast tacos for sale, $1.80 a piece, and a long list of extras like avocado, beans and Mexican goat cheese you can add for a few cents more. Find yourself a spot in the window, the blaze that is the dry, hot air held at bay as you sip through a coffee under the spinning air of old fans above you. Read a newspaper, someone will surely have left one behind by the time you arrive, or admire the paintings, boots and local photography for sale. Enjoy these few minutes, because they will be followed soon by the decadent forest of flavor that is Jorge’s breakfast tacos. After that, every time you order breakfast at the Marathon Coffee Shop, you’ll be itchy in your seat waiting for those little treats to arrive.
Lunch is a somewhat different affair, as the traditional Mexican flavorings of breakfast give way to the ever elusive combination of healthy and tasty, again completely pulled off by the kitchen crew of one as he fires up tuna or veggie or turkey paninis with everything you’d expect tucked between them. Throw in a Mexican Coke, sugar sweetened, and follow it all up perhaps with a few minutes of cigarettes, rocking chairs and conversation with locals on the porch and you’ll surely be rubbing your stomach with satisfaction the entire time.
As far as dinner goes, though, the coffee shop isn’t open for dinner. If you want to experience that, you’ll just have to frequent this lonely basin town and hope to find the porch lights on one night, cowboys, local college kids, artists and ranchers swilling drinks and jokes and talking politics or religion or nothing of the sort while they all share dinner and libation into the night together.
Photo Gallery: Hiking Grand Canyon
Nathan posted this in Photos, Uncategorized
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- Olivia, 6am, full trail regalia.
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- Switchback.
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- Descent.
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- The Second Tunnel
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- A Tristan photo. I like to think this is what Grand Canyon seemed like, even if it's not actually what it looked like.
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- Mule train. Hikers must back up again' the wall.
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- Some places felt ripped out of Jim Henson's Labyrinth.
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- Secret hidden pathways.
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- No shade for the mules.
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- Victor's Oasis. No diving.
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- Devil's Corkscrew, the last set of switchbacks on your way down, your first major obstacle when climbing up.
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- A good, solid canteen.
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- River Rest House, forty paces or so from the Colorado.
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- These old stairs must have taken some serious labor, built so far down here with such weighty stone.
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- The family gets wet at River Rest House.
Photo Gallery: Grand Canyon Rim Trail
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- A pouch full of essentials at all times: canteen, spirits, and camera.
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- Down into the unphotographable
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- Rapunzel, let down your hair. Thars tired mule in them hill.
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- Boney crag
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- A tree choosing to teeter on the edge.
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- Shrub onlookers
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- Contemplating...
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- ...and testing.
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- Consequences.
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- A place
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- and People.
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- Near the left, over the edge, you can see the trail we would later take down to the Colorado, which you can just barely see in the middle of it all.
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- Ryan supports his brother.
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- A hidden wooded house I found in the forest near our campground.
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- Olivia was kind enough to escort me on a canyon sunset date night.
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- A lady lords o'er her crevace.
Photo Gallery: Grand Canyon National Park
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- Dusky
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- I think I accidentally bought blind mens glasses.
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- Tristan, rim side, working on his Junior Ranger badge.
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- Tristan writes how the Canyon makes him feel for his induction into Junior Rangerhood.
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- Olivia in yellow.
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- The fair color of drink.
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- Youngest cowpolk, oh how you contemplate this mighty climb.
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- Boy at rest, blue bandana.
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- Trailer trash in bliss.
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- A stray kitten comes to visit, so we put out water.
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- You're not supposed to feed the animals, but somehow feral kitties don't seem to apply.
Photo Gallery: A Flagstaff Picnic
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- I'm going home to my galaxy
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- Waters, a few Red Stripes, throw in a Mexican Coke, some shrimp and a few frisbees and you've got a picnic
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- Picnic essentials
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- Ryan, meet Mexican Coke
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- Mid-frolf refreshments
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- Skewered
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- Uncle Bob's Shiskas. Shrimp, Peppers, Texas Mushrooms, Onion and Apricot
Photo Gallery: Jerome, AZ
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- Nathan at lunch, Flatiron Cafe
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- A small table at the Flatiron Cafe in Jerome, AZ
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- Tristan, intrepid over his mango yogurt soup breakfast
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- Breakfast at the Flatiron Cafe, Jerome, AZ
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- The Flatiron Cafe, Olivia emerges
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- After breakfast smokes outside the Flatiron Cafe
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- Another angle
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- A real gem of a store in Jerome AZ
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- Something metal...
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- Down the hill, Jerome, Arizona
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- Homes and businesses built right into the mountain in Jerome, AZ
Photo Gallery: Pine Lawn Ranch
I basically only took these shots to illustrate how very crammed into our spot we were! About 2 – 6 inches on every side.
Photo Gallery: Willow Lake RV Park & Campground
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- Every spot has shade, a picnic table or two and a grill!
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- The Dutchess in all her remaining glory
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- Distance shot...
These are the Pictures
We've lumped them together by event and tried to make them as easy to slideshow through as possible.
If you click on a thumbnail, the full-sized pic will pop up. At that point, you can click on the right or left of that picture to scroll through all of the pictures on the entire page.
Have fun, and remember...be safe.
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Meet the Folks
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Olivia Meiring, aka Ms. Wakame
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Tristan David
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Nathan, also at ClickNathan
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