Day 25 [Marathon, TX]

Above is my room for the evening.  I am staying at an awesomely crazy hostel in Marathon, TX.  This room is on the second floor, and I'm told has an incredible view of the stars at night.  I won't even have to break out my tent tonight!  The town of Marathon is a unique little town of about 400 people.  They have a small grocery store, a pizza place, and a saloon.  This hostel consists of a bunch of random little one-room buildings built by people that have traveled through.  The story about the photo below of the train house is really neat.  Apparently the sheriff here in Marathon caught some guys that were train-hopping across America.  He didn't know what to do with them so he brought them up to this hostel.  They were orphans or at least were permanent road dogs, and had been train hopping and staying wherever they could their entire lives.  They ended up staying at this place for three months and during that time built a shack that resembled a train (probably because that was all they ever knew as home).  Eventually they were asked to leave because they caused too much trouble in town.  What makes this hostel so cool is that you can pick out any of the little rooms to sleep in and they all have a story.  There's probably 10 different little buildings in camp here and all of them are unique and range from being built with re-bar and cement to beer bottles and paper machete.  An absolutely unique and interesting place that I have been hearing about from fellow cyclists for the past 200 miles.  The best part?  They let us cyclists stay for free!

Train-shack

Hostel owner's car painted by a passer-through