Dinner with a Felon, and our Honeymoon

August 7th is a special day because it marks my wedding anniversary.  Today Paul and I have been married 14 years.  I've already blogged about our wedding, so I thought I'd talk about our honeymoon, which was so much fun.

Here's a postcard from where we stayed - Lajitas, TX.  It was an old timey western town surrounded by the mountains of Big Bend, Texas.  Our hotel was in the middle of the strip:

We had many fun excursions while there, even though it was August and 5 million degrees.

One evening driving back to our hotel we stopped at a pizza parlor - the only restaurant for many open miles.  When we walked in, there was one waitress/cook and a cowboy with his dog.  We sat at the counter and while we waited for our pizzas to cook talked with the waitress and the cowboy.

Turns out he'd just gotten out of jail.

Yup, we dined with a convicted felon on our honeymoon.

He asked if we had ever heard of Robert Earl Keen.  We hadn't, not being fans of country music.  Anyhow, this guy - the felon - had a country song written about him.  For his devious smuggling of marijuana across the border.

He told us we should visit Boquillas, a little village in Mexico, and how to get there.

Ever up for adventure, we followed his instructions and parked our cars by the river.

Soon enough, this guy waded across to pick us up in his rowboat.

We asked if he knew our felon friend.  Deep silence.  Then we told him he'd sent us, and he laughed and asked how he was.

True to the felon's instructions, we were able to rent burros for $2 each to ride up to the village.

At the village, we dined on authetic burritos, 3 for a dollar, and icy cold Cokes in bottles.

Of all the trips we've taken, it was one of our best excursions, rivaled only by the time we "accidentally" went to Sturgis and camped out in some guy's backyard.  More on that another time.

We also went to Terlingua, because I'd always wanted to see a ghost town.

The cemetary:

And what remained of the quicksilver mining town:

Note the date on this picture.  Little did we know that some 13 years later on that very day I'd give birth to twin boys!

Certainly one of the most endearing and unusual things about Lajitas was their mayor.

Here I am pictured with their mayor, Clay Henry Jr.

Now you might think I inserted the wrong picture here, but I didn't.  Clay Henry Jr. is a goat.  And he, like his father before him, had been elected mayor of the town.

He also liked to drink beer.  Lone Star in particular.  He was, after all, a die-hard Texan.

This goat could guzzle beer faster than any other college student I ever knew.

Finally, we took a horse ride.

Here are Paul and I, crossing back over the Rio Grande by horseback.

It was an awesome honeymoon.  I love that we went there in off-season, so we didn't encounter a bunch of tourists.  Today, Lajitas Texas has a big resort.  I'm glad we got to see it before it got 'big'.

Happy anniversary, Paul!  May we have many more adventures ahead of us.