I've been doing a little traveling over the last month or two and it felt GREAT!!!! It was so nice to get out of my usual routine, see some new places and get inspired.
I've been wanting to explore West Texas for a while so we planned a trip to hit Alpine, Marfa and Marathon. We also managed to fit in a side trip to Fort Davis and basically saw a ton of beautiful scenery while road tripping around the area.
We started out our trip in Alpine, TX which is so cute and has beautiful street art. There are murals all over the down town area and you can just walk around and enjoy art between the cute shops.
After Alpine we headed into Marfa. There are a lot of posts from social media influencers about what to see and do in Marfa. They're pretty good at hitting the highlights of Marfa, but as someone who is a little (a lot) older than the average influencer, my focus is on activities that are not particularly trendy. With that said, I did feel pretty hip in Marfa. There are lots of cool bars and restaurants and every place you stop to take a photo looks like a magazine layout.
Marfa is weird and artsy and forces you to slow down a bit. Most shops and restaurants we went to were on their own schedule. Some just open for a few hours each day, some only open a couple days a week. You couldn't stick to a strict itinerary so you had to just go with the flow. That is not my usual m.o., but it really made for a relaxing vacation. No plans, just walking around and seeing what's around the corner.
Despite enjoying the laid back vibe of Marfa I DID need a little bit of exercise to balance out the day drinking and Mexican food we'd been indulging in, so we headed over to Fort Davis to do a little hiking. There are a lot of spots to hike in the state park but we just did some short hikes from the botanical garden - which was spectacular!
The town of Fort Davis is also really cute with some great shops and a lovely downtown.
The last stop on our West Texas adventure was a stay at the Gage Hotel in Marathon. Marathon is a very small and quiet town but there are several really pretty spots to relax, including the Gage Gardens: a super quirky garden area just a block from the hotel itself. If you have the chance to check out this hotel you should! It's historic and beautiful and full of personality.
During the entire trip the landscape threw us beautiful sunrises and sunsets. My favorite sunset was in Marathon on the last night there:
It really is a beautiful area of the country - check out my Flickr feed if you'd like to see more pics of the trip. Especially all of the sunsets!
I brought an embroidery "travel project" with me on the trip and actually got a little bit done - I'll post about that next time. I designed the project with Texas in mind, but after this trip I had so many more ideas! This trip did exactly what I think travel should do: relaxed and inspired me!
I hope everyone is getting out and enjoying the weather and some travel too!