My reporting on the winter trip 2013/14 has been sporadic, not chronologically or geographically ordered, and I’m in the mood to try and set that straight. After that Peos River crossing, we went to Alpine and checked into a really cute, really dog-friendly, remodeled motor court called the Maverick Inn.

They had a great neon sign of the period.

And while the rooms were not huge they were spotless and came with fridge and microwave, and bottled water; the breakfast was really good, Chico was welcome in the lobby (where I had to go to get any internet connection) and all over the grounds. The staff went out of their way to make friends with him, as did a lot of the guests. I really liked it there.

Cute, cute, cute.

Alpine is a nice town, we spent half the first day walking around and looking:

Amtrak stops here.

Lots of murals in Alpine.

Dan “Hoss” Blocker went to college here.

Loved the light, the colors, the paint job.

That afternoon, I drove over to Marfa and didn’t visit the galleries, but looked around a little.

Cool wall.

Nice detail on this house.

As usual, Chico experienced things the canine way.

We called it a day around sunset and cruised back to the Maverick to have a quiet hotel-room New Years Eve and get ready to go see Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande the next day.