Terlingua Chili Cookoff

Terlingua is well known, in certain circles, for two things, Carrol Shelby's Terlingua Race Team and the Terlingua chili cookoffs. (You can find Terlingua Chili on the menu at Chili's Restaurants.). The latter started in 1967 and Carroll Shelby was part of both. For some reason there are now two cookoffs that happen the first weekend in November, The Original Terlingua Chili Cookoff and the Terlingua International Chili Cookoff. From what I've read, the original group broke off into three groups.

We've been curious about the types of vendors that are at an event that brings 10,000 people to a small section of a large county whose overall population is only about 9,000. We'd wondered if there might be a niche there we could fill, making and selling something at the event(s). Turns out, the answer is no. There were just a couple of token vendors, mainly selling food. We saw a couple of folks selling hats (a necessity out in the desert sun), a local guy selling jewelry and a tent of women's halter tops made from handkerchieves. That was it. The crowd was there to party. Folks came from all over in their RVs, pulling ATVs or golf carts behind them. We saw these rolling down Texas 118 for the past week and wondered why. Once we got to the grounds, we understood. There are acres of campers. It's a long walk to the cooking area or the beer tents, so people drive their ATVs from one end to the other.

As I understand it, there is music each night, but we didn't stay. The level of inebriation that was building made me want to be off the roads well before the party got rolling. I'm told that the police don't give any slack where moving violations are concerned and we saw two people pulled over as we drove home.

We got home to clouds, wind and a large thunderhead forming east of us. Within an hour, we had a nice rain, sans lightning, which the dogs and I appreciated. After dinner Dave and I watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie from the disk we have. It was a silent film, The Manxman. I'm really liking our movie nights, snuggled together with the computer with the desert outside.

 

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