Triphap - Funny Travel Stories and Travel Horror Stories

At an unfinished motel in Terlingua Ghost Town, Texas—an old mining town “revived” by artists, naturalists, hippies, and more than a few people with less than a few teeth—we followed a sign that said “Office” around back to an old camping trailer, flanked by a pile of scrap wood and a plastic kiddie pool. There we found two men outside drinking beer, watching a TV that sat on an old washing machine. One (later identified as a bounty hunter) directed us to his wife in an end-room of the motel. Gesturing to a barber’s chair and sink, she told us she was “keeping up with her hair appointments” while they were under construction.

Our room was comfortable and clean, though the walls were fiberboard. We were the only guests. When we asked if there were any restaurants in town, the innkeeper replied “Oh yes! Four!” as if this was an overwhelming selection. Four or five shops were scattered randomly on unpaved roads among houses built from still-crumbling ruins.

On the second night it rained so hard that rivers formed in the sand—the result of a hurricane on the coast. I landed in a cactus trying to jump one and spent the rest of the evening “de-prickering” my pants.

The power went out and the restaurant we were at could only offer us beer. The bartender called around (“Hey, it’s me…”), trying to find us a restaurant with electricity: the town’s former-theatre-turned-restaurant could cook us anything that wasn’t fried, and grill until the kitchen got too smoky.

When we returned to our hot, dark room after dinner, five road-tripping Texan cousins who’d checked in invited us to a bonfire around back with the innkeeper’s husband, his brother, another local, and a toddler throwing bottles into the fire, refusing to kill toads at his father’s request.

As we talked about the brother’s prison tattoos, the fire illuminated a pickup speeding up the dirt road across the flat, treeless landscape. “He’s taking that turn too fast…” the locals said, shaking their heads.

The truck skidded, flipped, and landed upside down on its cab.

The locals and cousins took off running toward the truck.

The innkeeper came out of the trailer, visibly upset.

“Do you know who it is?” we asked.

“That’s my ex-husband!” she cried.

The cousins and locals returned a good twenty minutes later, unsuccessful in their attempt to flip the truck back over. They attempted to call the police, but no one could get through.

Eventually, the people from the car—unharmed, and none of them the innkeeper’s ex-husband—flipped the truck and managed to speed off, though there wasn’t much head room in the crushed cab.

We stood there, dumbfounded by the beautiful absurdity of this place.

The next morning, the abandoned truck was found in a yard a few miles away and we left Terlingua because there was nothing left to see there.