re: Alpine, Texas - what is it like?

Fort Davis can be an interesting half day. Balmorhea spring fed pool to freeze your arse off. McDonald observatory the night they do their star party or whatever it's called.

Not very Alpine

I like Alpine and the entire Alpine, Marfa, ft Davis area. If I were going to live in one of those places it would be Marfa but I am into art and the nightlife there would be decent. There is some good food in Marfa at Foodshark (food truck) and their brick & mortar place Future Shark. You can go to either of those places and hipsters and art tourists will be sitting next to West Texas ranchers eating away happy as can be. There are some big bands that play in Marfa too. But if hipsters offend you then you wouldn't like Marfa. Alpine has some live bands (local and touring) that play at Railroad Blues and Harry's Tinaja is a great local hangout. The original Reata's restaurant is in Alpine but I have never found good mexican food there. Presidio about an hour and a half away has some great "hole in the wall grandma cooking in the back" mexican food. Ft Davis is the other city....all are about 20 minutes apart. Its more of a tourist town. All of the towns are at 5000 ft altitude which means really nice summers.....think Denver weather. It does get down in the teens and even single digits at night in the winter but it warms up to the 60s usually during the day.

I'd rather live in Alpine than LA. It's pretty cool. Beautiful part of the country.

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McDonald observatory the night they do their star party or whatever it's called.

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It's called the Texas Star Party and it's a week long. It is one of the (if not *the*) largest amateur astronomy gatherings in the world. People will set up some seriously big telescopes and you can look through them.

When I went somebody had set up a 30 inch Dobsonian (that's a scope with a 30 inch wide lens) that probably cost him $200k. I looked through it and could faintly see the blu-ish spiral arms of M33, no time exposure needed.

You were thinking of the Gage Hotel in Marathon, weren't you? It is a cool hotel.

Wow, I haven’t heard of this town in a while. I went there 2 years in a row for college rodeos. Seems like not a lot has hangs and the rodeo is still the highlight. We had a lot of good times, few members got arrested but it wasn’t a big deal. I think I actually still have a key to a hotel room that we stayed in. Yes, there wasn’t a card but an actual key. It was the last time I ever remember having an actual deadbolt on a hotel room.