We flew to San Antonio, Texas to drop off the girls, and then we did a mini road back home. Typically, when we go home from SA, we do the whole drive in one shot. We leave at 5am (TX time) and we get home around midnight (CA time). It’s a really long day, but we are just so anxious to get home, we get it done. This time though, since we were traveling without the girls, we thought it would be fun to take our time and make some stops. And since it was just a few weeks before our anniversary, we agreed to make this a mini anniversary trip and then do another mini road trip the weekend of our actual wedding anniversary. You put all the days together and we had a nice week together.

It was so strange to fly in to San Antonio and then leave the very next morning towards home. We basically said “hi” and “bye” to Ben’s mom and sister. From San Antonio, the drive to Marfa was a little over 6 hours. It would have been a little less, but we hit a really bad storm and had to drive super slowly because of the low visibility. Marfa is a small, peaceful town in the middle of nowhere. It’s known for the Marfa Lights, which we weren’t able to see, and some of their art installations like Prada Marfa. When we arrived, the weather was amazing. Several months back when we were considering a move to Texas, Ben looked up the Texas city with the best weather and Alpine, Texas was the winner. Considering Alpine is right next to Marfa, it makes sense why Marfa also had beautiful weather and wasn’t suffering from the sweltering heat like most of Texas. Or maybe we just happened to come at a really good time!

A few weeks prior to our trip, I looked at booking us a place to stay in Marfa, but everything was sold out. If I were going to stay there, El Cosmico looks fun and adventurous, or Hotel Paisano for a cozy ambience. Since we weren’t staying the night, we trekked on to Prada Marfa. It’s an art installation and not an actual store you can shop in. It’s about 30 minutes away from Marfa, and much closer to the city of Valentine.

I love the contrast of the faux storefront with the landscape. It really is in the middle of nowhere. It’s an interesting little stop should you find yourself driving through West Texas. We moved onward to Van Horn, which is where we booked a hotel for the night. I like historic hotels, and was interested in staying at Hotel El Capitan, but it was already sold out, so we ended up booking a random hotel through Hotwire. There’s still so much to share about all our stops, so get ready for a few more posts and loads of pictures!