Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
To mark the occasion, here’s a post out of sequence. We stayed at Galveston Island State Park in Texas in early December (posts coming about that in January). While there, we visited the Festival of Lights at Moody Gardens.
Merry Christmas!
We stayed at Marathon Motel & RV Park in Marathon, Texas. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Utilities:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Our review on Campground Reviews:
High desert delight
This was our second time staying here, and we enjoyed it just as much as our first trip. The only downside is the freight train that runs through town with its horn blaring because of the uncontrolled crossings. Luckily, it didn’t tend to go through after 11pm or too early in the morning. Otherwise, this is a peaceful corner of West Texas, and Marathon remains a cute little town. The campground is delightful, with a cactus garden and a chicken run to enjoy. The sites in the 50A section are conveniently situated east/west to mitigate the worst effects of the famous wind. We camped at Marathon Motel and RV Park in a Motorhome.
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site:
Utilities:
A resident cat sitting on one of our chairs:
Another resident cat:
A short-term neighbor brought their outdoor cat, which got into fights with the resident cats, and hid in our engine bay:
GIF of wild javelinas (aka peccaries) walking through our site:
Aerial views of our site and the RV park:
This park is in a dark skies area, so there were lots of stars visible (I’ll have another post later with more aerial photos and star pics):
A tiny home and covered RV across the road from the campground; if we ever buy land again, we might do something like this:
Other sites:
Laundromat:
Outdoor showers and kitchen:
Restroom:
Bathrooms and motel room:
More motel rooms:
Historic signs:
The train track is across the road from the RV park, with an uncontrolled crossing right there, so the trains honk their horns several times:
A nice courtyard:
Rita’s Cantina, which was closed last time and is still closed; they just can’t get the staff to open it:
An RV park resident hosts star parties a few times each week:
A desert garden area:
I enjoyed hanging out with the resident chickens:
Despite the train noise, we still enjoy this RV park and town, and no doubt will be back again in the future.
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 301 miles from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Marathon, Texas. The video starts with a 2x zoom through our coach while the slides come in, for an interesting different perspective, and ends with the truck’s view of getting set up just before a rainy sunset.
We drove our coach 301 miles, about five hours of driving, from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Marathon, Texas.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading southeast:
An interactive map:
Joining I-10 East:
Recycled Roadrunner artwork at a rest stop:
Rio Grande with a little water due to rain (it was dry when we drove past earlier in the week):
Nice mountains beyond Las Cruces:
Leaving New Mexico:
Welcome to Texas:
Looking over the border into Mexico:
Playing El Paso while leaving El Paso:
Fuel stop:
Rainy drive:
Immigration checkpoint:
Entering Central Time Zone:
A long building on a trailer at stop opportunity:
Rainbow:
Sun rays:
A blimp (I think used for watching the border with Mexico), grounded probably due to the lightning storms in the area:
Picnic area stop:
Arriving at Marathon Motel & RV Park:
Our site:
For some unknown reason, our coach came with a set of towel rails inside the shower. Which makes no sense, since you’d have to remove the towels before using it.
So one of the first modifications we did after we got our coach was to remove the bars from those rails and flip the ends upside down, so they serve as hooks, and add another set of towel rails outside the shower.
Here’s a pic from years ago of the inverted ends of the rails (and soap dispensers, but we moved those elsewhere after I knocked them off a couple of times):
Our replacement is mounted above the toilet, next to the shower:
Much better!
We visited McGinn’s PistachioLand Home of the World’s Largest Pistachio. A fun roadside attraction that we saw in passing a couple of years ago, but got around to visiting this time.
PistachioLand:
Nutastic!
We re-visited White Sands National Park in New Mexico. We first visited in 2022, but enjoyed re-visiting this year. As the NPS site says, it’s like no place else on Earth, the world’s largest gypsum dunefield.
The official NPS map; click or tap for full-size (and more info):
Visitor Center with the historic sign from before it became a National Park:
Road between sand dunes:
Picnic area:
Sand dunes:
During our travel to Las Cruces, we stopped at Bowlin’s “The Thing?” Travel Center for lunch (as mentioned in the travel post), and of course we had to explore “The Thing?” museum, another fun roadside attraction. The idea being WHAT IF… aliens have manipulated human history?
Cheesetastic fun.
We stayed at Las Cruces KOA Journey in Las Cruces, New Mexico. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Our third visit to this RV park with a nice view.
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Utilities:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Nice place to stop in Las Cruces
This was our third time staying here and our first time not staying in one of the “view” sites, although we still had a decent view of both mountain ranges. This campground is conveniently off I-10 and has easy access to anything in Las Cruces. We camped at Las Cruces KOA Journey in a Motorhome.
An interactive map of the park:
RV park map:
Our site (with empty sites on either side, making it look more spacious than it was):
Utilities weren’t super convenient; having to use three 10-foot sewer hoses wasn’t ideal (the concrete pad and utilities were clearly set up with trailers in mind):
We enjoyed a local pizza delivery on our last night; tasty, fast, and inexpensive:
A neighbor fiver pulling out, with an unusual hitch:
Other sites:
Community room:
Playground:
Nice view:
Sun rays through dust on the way back to the campground from a day trip:
Dust obscuring Las Cruces:
Still a nice RV park. No doubt we’ll stay here yet again in the future. (See our previous two stays for more photos.)
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 258 miles from Tucson, Arizona to Las Cruces, New Mexico.