Gage Hotel - Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival

The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was a fantastic spot for West Texas to show up and make a splash. The folks in charge of booths worked a small miracle and shuffled things so the Texas Mountain Trail / TPWD booth was on an end and our corner of Gage Hotel / Marathon / Big Bend National Park info was right next to them. Brilliant! Thankfully there were plenty of Gage brochures to go around and the TMT booth had extra Marathon and BBNP fliers as well, so with our presence combined, we were able to provide very specific information about Marathon and very general regional highlights at the adjacent booth.

The general response was overwhelming - most folks who visited the booth had fond memories of staying at the Gage or had heard about it from friends and had not yet made the trek out to Marathon. Only a few knew that the Gage Gardens existed; more knew about the fantastic restaurant and bar, which was really no surprise! We did our best to get everyone caught up on the 30 acres of gardens and fields and generally wildlife-friendly adventures across the tracks from the main Gage property.

In case y'all missed our little corner of the world at the RGVBF:

We also nerded out over the newest National Geographic guide and fantastic artists on hand, but there's a separate blog post for that! (make that two) In addition to the other artists on hand, a local staple in the art community was present: Gerald Sneed. He stopped by the booth with a sneak preview of his West Texas mug (spoiler: Acorn Woodpecker, Blue-throated Hummingbird and Montezuma Quail are on it) and a shirt and greeting card sample (both pictured below). The poster and cards are available, shirt and mug still pending. Sneed's work is iconic for Texas and we're thrilled to have a preview!



















(This post was technically posted on 11/26/11 but dated earlier for archive context.)