Sometimes a little change in plans can bring about great surprises. Instead of driving to Guadalupe Mountains we drove to Davis Mountains state park. Davis Mountains State park is home to the Indian Lodge built in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps and is furnished with the original furniture. The lodge is a beautiful adobe structure tucked into the edge of the mountains. When we asked if they had any rooms the receptionist first said that they were booked up. She then said that they had one room available with a double bed. We stayed in room 124 in the top corner of the lodge. It was a very quaint room with an over sized bed frame made of hand carved cedar and a beautifully simple white duvet. The end of the bed had an Indian blanket across the foot of the bed for decoration. The Indian Lodge resembles a Southwestern Native-American-style, multilevel pueblo village. Indian Lodge was voted the #1 accommodation in Texas by readers of Texas Highways magazine in 1992. Despite not having reservations we lucked upon a room for one night. The next day we started down the road towards The McDonald Observatory and happened upon The Prude Ranch. We pulled into the seemingly vacant ranch and asked if they had rooms available.
We booked a room for the night and scheduled a horseback ride for that afternoon. Our wrangler for the day was named "Dutch." Dutch took us for a nice walk/trot through the ranch and told us a bit about the history of the ranch and the current struggles to keep the ranch running. The Prude Ranch is over 100 years old and has been family owned and run. With the ranch only 14 miles from the McDonald Observatory we were able to attend the star party later that night. We learned how to read a planisphere and identify the night star constellations. The next day we continued our drive on the scenic road through the Davis Mountains and turned back East on Hwy 90 taking the long way home. Hwy 90 takes you through Marfa, Alpine and Marathon and then heads toward Del Rio. By taking this route we traveled across the Amistad Reservoir and had the chance to stop in Seminole Canyon State park. Although the drive was long it was nice to see another part of the state. We made it back home before Christmas and I have spent the last two days nursing my cold trying to get better.
