The Lee Family: Spring Break 2014 Day 1: Exploring West Texas

On Saturday afternoon CK flew us to Alpine, Texas, so we could explore Big Bend National Park and West Texas over Spring Break. Before we headed to the airport, we helped Antonio and Luca celebrate their 3rd and 1st birthdays, ate cake and rode around our neighborhood on the train Marco and Stacy hired for their party. It was a fun celebration! We arrived in Alpine after a two hour flight and got our things loaded into CK's partner's tricked out black Jeep. There was even room for the girls! Since it was later in the afternoon, we decided to grab dinner in Alpine before driving the 30 miles to Marfa, where we stayed Saturday and Sunday night at the Hotel Paisano. Based on Tex's advice, we ate at Reata, one of our favorite restaurants in Fort Worth which actually originated in Alpine. The food, as usual, was excellent and we enjoyed our dinner in the bar area sitting at a high top table (still amazed neither of our girls ended up on the floor). After dinner we drove to Marfa and checked into our hotel, which is not only beautiful but has a great historic charm. The 1956 film "Giant" was filmed near Marfa, and the stars - Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean - all stayed at the Hotel. In fact, you can stay in the specific rooms where each of the three stayed. Our room was perfect, with a sitting room and fold out couch as well as a separate bedroom and bathroom. We set up Olivia's pack-n-play and Sofia's fold out couch bed and CK got the girls in bed with stories. Not long after we'd said good night to the girls and were reading in bed, our door opened and little Olivia came in, brushing the hair out of her eyes with a "Hello!" as if it was 8am! She said "sissy got her out" and the girls decided they wanted to sleep together in the couch bed, so CK got Olivia cuddled in with Sofia and they went to sleep.

The next morning Sofia announced that she was never going to sleep with Olivia again! She said Olivia moved and kicked her all night long! We got ready and ate at Memo's Cafe, which was good even if the pace of service wasn't quite what we're used to in North Texas. We waited an hour between our order and food and we were all starving when our food arrived. Once full, we loaded into the Jeep and headed out. We decided to return and explore Alpine and visit the Museum of the Big Bend. Alpine is a medium-sized town that is set in the West Texas hills and has a great feel to it. The Sul Ross State University is there and is a beautiful classic college campus. The Museum of Big Bend is actually on the University's campus. It is a very interesting museum with the history of the area and stories of early exploration of the area and settlement. It's such a rugged and arid area, it's hard to imagine early explorers were able to survive, but apparently they did. Sofia loved figuring out where we were in relationship to Marfa and where we'd be going to Marathon on their map. Olivia, who was getting sleeping, mainly ran around and I tried to keep her quiet. That didn't work out as well as planned, so I didn't see much of the museum and Olivia and I ended up running around outside. CK and Sofia were soon done and we all headed out to drive toward Ft. Davis and the McDonald Observatory. We figured we should explore as much of the area as we could before heading toward Big Bend National Park.

Olivia soon fell asleep and we drove through the town of Ft. Davis, which looked like a small, cute touristy town. We also passed the actual Fort and decided not to stop since we knew Olivia would wake up. We drove through the David Mountains State Park to McDonald Observatory, where we took the last tour of the afternoon. The tour included a slideshow on the history of the observatory, what the scientists do and why the Davis mountain location is ideal for an observatory. After, we were taken to one of the telescopes and our guide described how it works and allowed Sofia to operate it! It was so cool and moved so quietly and smoothly!

After the tour, we loaded up and headed back to Marfa where we had dinner at the Hotel Paisano's restaurant, which turned out to be excellent. We weren't able to get in right away, so we hung out in their courtyard and waited. CK built a fire so we could stay warm while the girls played and ran around. The end of a very fun day!

Some sort of West Texas sheep!