Terlingua International Chili Cookoff

[Arcticdude]

We spent the last week in Lajitas, Tx, just down the road from Terlingua and just outside Big Bend National Park. If you've never seen a south Texas nighttime sky, you really should put it on your bucket list. When you get outside of the cities, the light pollution gets low enough to allow you to see stars you never knew existed. We got into town with the new moon, so the skies were truly incredible. The Milky Way was truly the Milky Way! With just a set of binoculars, you can see some incredible sights. Unfortunately for sky watching, the moon was headed into the full cycle, so you had to wait until very late 3-4 am to get good viewing as the week progressed.


Fortunately, the 48th Terlingua International Chili Cookoff was kicking off, so there was plenty to see and do by week's end! Terlingua is a great place to go to lose the current societal direction. There's very little cell service and what there is is poor at best. I'm thinking I probably say next to Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis and many honest politicians, as they were in comfortable hiding.

Terlingua is home to one of the major mercury mines that operated in the country. Very unique geography and history. It definitely worth going back to when the chili cookoff is not going on, just to see how life truly goes on.

Interestingly enough, a multimillionaire tried to create an upscale planned community in 2003 or 2004 in Lajitas. There are some really neat features there and it's a neat place to stay.

Of course, the highlight of the cookoff was really cool. The daughter of the founder from 48 yrs ago is still involved in one cookoff (there are 2, as somebody got p'o-d ~25 yrs ago and they ran 3 miles down the road and started their own cookoff-a story in and of itself! ), so it's a very unique local but universal festival.