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| Evening beside the San Antonio River Walk |
Part 18 ended back at our Terlingua Ranch cabin after the rowboat crossing into Boquillas del Carmen and the drive through Big Bend National Park. That border-country leg runs from Pecos and Big Bend to Boquillas and back to Terlingua Ranch. The cabin gave us one last quiet night in Far West Texas: the Milky Way above the ridges, Shehzadi dusty outside, and no compelling reason to unpack anything else.
Coffee on the porch came with sunrise over the mountains. Then it was time to leave the ranch and aim east for San Antonio, trading the previous day's border crossing for a long road leg across West Texas and into the Hill Country.
Trans-America Overland Part 19: Terlingua Ranch to San Antonio via Langtry and Junction — Post Summary
We leave Terlingua Ranch in Shehzadi, travel through Alpine, Marathon, Langtry and Junction, and end in San Antonio. The road shifts from Far West Texas desert to Hill Country before an evening beside the San Antonio River Walk, with dinner, tour boats and a much softer bed than the previous night's cabin.
| What's Covered | |
| 🚙 | Terlingua Ranch to Junction — Alpine, Marathon, Langtry and the eastbound road across West Texas |
| 🏙️ | Junction to San Antonio — Kerrville, Boerne and arrival at our River Walk hotel |
| 🌉 | San Antonio River Walk — love locks, dinner, tour boats and an evening beside the river |
| 🌃 | San Antonio overnight — downtown lights and a city bed after the Terlingua cabin |
| ➡️ | Next stop — east on I-10 toward Houston and Lafayette, Louisiana |
We drove Shehzadi, our overlanding Toyota Tundra, east from Terlingua Ranch to San Antonio, leaving the desert around Alpine and Marathon for Langtry, Junction and the Hill Country. By evening, a dusty ranch departure had become dinner beside the San Antonio River Walk. In between lay Judge Roy Bean country, a Junction lunch stop and a very large amount of Texas.
Method: Overland by truck via TX-118, US-90 and I-10 farther east
Distance / Time: Exact mileage not recorded · morning departure to late-afternoon arrival
Themes: Far West Texas roads · Judge Roy Bean history · San Antonio River Walk
Vehicle: Shehzadi (2024 Toyota Tundra)
Route at a Glance
- Terlingua Ranch to Alpine — TX-118 north from the ranch country
- Alpine to Langtry via Marathon — US-90 across Far West Texas
- Langtry to Junction — eastbound road leg, then north to I-10 for lunch in Junction
- Junction to San Antonio — I-10 through Kerrville and Boerne
- San Antonio River Walk — love locks, riverside dinner and tour boats
- San Antonio overnight — downtown view and hotel stop
Terlingua Ranch to Junction via Alpine and Langtry
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| Low clouds over the mountains near Terlingua Ranch |
We packed the cabin, rolled out on TX-118 and headed north to Alpine. From there US-90 took over, carrying us through Marathon and across the open country toward Langtry. The road changed by degrees rather than with a trumpet fanfare: desert basins, long ridgelines, then more grass and limestone as we worked east.
US-90 put Langtry directly in our path. The town name has a western-grade identity problem: historical sources most often tie Langtry to railroad foreman George Langtry, while local lore linked it to actress Lillie Langtry. Roy Bean supplied the actress connection later, naming his saloon the Jersey Lilly for her. As a local justice of the peace, he became known as the “Law West of the Pecos.” Branding was clearly not waiting for social media.
Junction arrived around lunch. The town grew in the 1870s near the meeting of the North and South Llano Rivers, an unusually literal name by Texas standards. We pulled into the Pilot Travel Center, ordered Subway sandwiches and iced tea, and drew a few questions from locals about Shehzadi's Maryland plates. The truck was a long way from home and apparently had started doing its own networking.
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| Shehzadi outside Pilot, Subway and Cinnabon during our Junction road stop. |
Junction to San Antonio via Kerrville and Boerne
East of Junction, I-10 carried us through Kerrville and Boerne. Both towns have deep German-Texan roots, though we were passing through rather than turning the day into a heritage seminar. The hills grew greener as we moved east, and the desert scale of the morning gradually gave way to the busier road network around San Antonio.
We reached San Antonio in the late afternoon. Shehzadi rolled into the hotel valet lane with Terlingua dust still on her, which was an excellent way to test whether valet parking had a sense of humor. Our hotel sat on the River Walk, and after weeks of dirt roads, tent setups and rustic cabins, the room felt almost suspiciously civilized.
Soft pillows. Crisp sheets. A rainfall shower. Air-conditioning with the ambition of a walk-in freezer. We approved.
Love Locks, Dinner and Tour Boats on the San Antonio River Walk
After cleaning up, we crossed the San Antonio River on Kallison Love Lock Walk, where padlocks covered the railing. We had seen the same habit from Paris to Tbilisi. Romance, it seems, travels with hardware.
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| Padlocks crowd the railing on Kallison Love Lock Walk above the San Antonio River. |
At river level, downtown became surprisingly intimate: stone crossings, trees, patios and low tour boats moving past the tables. After dark, lights hung over the water and mariachi music drifted from open-air restaurants. We found an outdoor table beside the river and ordered dinner while the boats kept circulating at roughly the speed required for everyone aboard to photograph everything.
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| Dinner beside the San Antonio River Walk |
The river carried far more history than a boat guide could fit into one loop. Archaeological work along the San Antonio River has documented prehistoric occupations long before the Spanish mission era. By 1718, Mission San Antonio de Valero—later known as the Alamo—had been founded here, and the Payaya were among many Native groups associated with the mission. That is a rather longer timeline than a dinner reservation usually has to handle.
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| A River Walk tour boat passes behind our table |
The River Walk belongs to a much newer chapter. After San Antonio's devastating 1921 flood, city flood-control proposals included filling the downtown river bend. Architect Robert H. H. Hugman argued for keeping the bend and turning it into usable public space. WPA funding and labor turned Hugman's plan into the initial downtown River Walk, completed by 1941. The patios, footbridges and boats around us were sitting beside a flood-control solution that had somehow acquired restaurants. Civil engineering does not always get this lucky.
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| Night beside the river as another tour boat moves through |
Dinner stretched while tour boats passed and families, couples and groups of friends filled the walkways. The mood was lively without feeling frantic. San Antonio had managed to put nightlife beside moving water without requiring either one to shout at the other.
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| Restaurants and pedestrians along the River Walk after dark |
After dinner, we kept walking under the stone bridges and along the lit river. The River Walk is very good at turning “one more block” into several more blocks. Nobody appeared especially upset by this.
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| An illuminated passenger boat passes a colorful River Walk mural |
San Antonio Overnight
Back at the hotel, the change from Terlingua was ridiculous: wooden cabin bunk one night, crisp hotel bed the next. From the room we looked over the river, a bridge and the downtown lights. Shehzadi remained in the valet lot below, presumably adapting to her sudden promotion.
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| San Antonio River and downtown lights from our hotel |
We were asleep quickly. The road had taken us from a quiet desert ranch into downtown San Antonio in a single day, without changing vehicles or asking Shehzadi whether she preferred either arrangement.
This leg changed the expedition's scale without changing the method: breakfast beside a dusty Terlingua cabin, dinner beside an urban river, same truck in between. Far West Texas had been sparse and border-focused; San Antonio put us back among crowds, tour boats and city lights. The day felt like two different trips connected by one long Texas road.
Next Stop — San Antonio to Lafayette
Morning would put us back on I-10, this time east from San Antonio through Schulenburg and Houston toward Lafayette, Louisiana. Part 20 follows that Texas-to-Cajun-country leg. Zydeco, Louisiana food and another long strip of Interstate waited farther east. For the moment, we were done driving. That was a useful sentence.
The complete 9,000-mile USA and Mexico overland roundtrip is plotted on Map-1 and Map-2.
Until next time,
- The Vagabond Couple and Shehzadi
