Tag: Texas

Big Bend Day 1

We spent Sunday night at the Abilene KOA, and we made it to Stillwell Store and Campground by early afternoon Monday. The campgrounds d where we are is just a huge gravel area, but there is power and water plus big sites. For $25 I won’t complain!

This will be a somewhat disjointed post since we have pretty bad WiFi at the Visitor Center, and no data on the phone at all most of the time. Tuesday we did a lot of driving – into the park on the main drive, then headed west to Maverick Junction  and the dirt Old Maverick Road, the back to hard surface road to Sana’a Elena Canyon, Castolon, and back to the entrance road. It was a long day.

I hadn’t been to Big Bend since my senior year in college, so I had no memory of the scenery. It is Chihuahuan  desert, different from the Mohave, Sonoran, and Great Basin deserts I am familiar with. Nice mountains. Lots of volcanic rock intermixed with old sedimentary rock.

Lots of volcanic domes
The Chisos Mountains are the major backdrop.
It was very hazy

Layers of mountains

The park service has left more signs of humans here than in any other park I have visited.

This was the jacal (home) of Gilberto Luna. He farmed here for many, many years.
Look this one up
Some metallic remnants too
Sutliff ranch house
Below Castolon. Home to a cotton rancher.
Engine used for a cotton gin
Aftermath of May’s wildfire
Homer Wilson ranch house. The circular wooden corral is still there.
Cerritos Castellan
Aptly named Mules Ears

We saw a lot of roadrunners, but only one cooperated for a (poor) picture.

Yes, that is a roadrunner

We also saw a few mule deer. This one was hanging out less than a mile from the Panther Junction Visitor Center.

There were actually three in this group.

I will post day 2 tomorrow since we are still on it!

And we are traveling again!

Between Christmas and the New Year we cleaned the house, put up the Christmas decorations, and tried not to bring too much “stuff”. We left Iowa on New Year’s Day, headed to Yukon, OK to pick up the coach. Everything we well. The motorhome refrigerator worked just fine, and the “penny on a cup of ice” was still on top of the ice when we got there. I do love solar! We spent the evening setting up in a rather boring campground (Mustang Run in Yukon) and putting away all the stuff we brought with us. We spent the next few days just stocking the refrigerator, trying to remember how everything worked (how could we have forgotten so much in 7 weeks?), seeing family, and doing some preventative maintenance. I didn’t take a picture of the campground because it was so boring. Nice long, flat spots with a picnic table, but no trees, no playground, and right next to busy I-40. The traffic was so loud and so continuous that it actually became white noise and didn’t bother us at all trying to sleep. It was convenient for what we needed though, so we will probably stay here again if needed.

Today we drove to Abilene, TX, spending the night in the KOA. It is actually fairly nice. It is next to the highway, but there are enough barriers that the noise isn’t bothersome at all. The campground has lots of long term residents, probably associated with the local oil industry based on the trucks parked in front of the trailers and fifth wheels. Housing is a real issue in the oil fields, and the ones living here are definitely luckier than many. The campground even has some trees and good spacing between the sites.

Long sites plus the mistletoe-garnished trees

We did a huge grocery shopping trip today since we are headed to the Big Bend area tomorrow. We have 350 miles to get to Stillwell Store and RV Park on the east side of Big Bend National Park. We will stay there until we head to our park reservation later in the week. I don’t know when I will have data service, but I will have pictures ready for when I do.

Home again

No pictures for this post. We spent Tuesday night in Albuquerque at the American RV Park. Nice place, but close to the highway. Luckily it was more of a continuous hum rather than intermittent jake brakes. Wednesday we headed rest of the way across New Mexico and all of Texas. It was long enough that Kevin got to drive some, a rare thing. We ended up at a tiny RV park 1 mile into Oklahoma called Double D. It was a very inexpensive park since we used our Passport America membership to get it half off. Otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it. There were maybe 2 spots that had the trees trimmed back enough for us, and they were having water problems so only an electrical hookup was available. It would be fine for most travel trailers or small motorhomes.

We got up early and headed to Yukon, a suburb of Oklahoma City. Maverick Run RV Park is quite nice with roomy sites and clear views. It was quite empty this time of year, but I understand it is really busy in the warmer parts of the year. We spent a full day getting the motorhome ready to go into storage. We are going to live dangerously and keep the refrigerator turned on, hoping the solar keeps the batteries charged enough. That mean cleaning out everything that wasn’t sealed, just in case. Kevin cleaned the tanks as well as he could, and I got the last 4 loads of laundry done. I even got the sheets and towels all washed! It will be nice to come back to a clean place.

Both of us were excited to head home, and we were up early on Saturday. Kevin and I winterized the motorhome, dropped it in the storage lot, and headed on the 600 mile trip to Iowa by a little after 9:00 am. We made it home around 8:00 pm The house seems huge, and Lily seemed quite impressed. She kept running up and down stairs, playing with the stuffed mice Kevin gave her. The housekeeper had come on Friday, and the place is as spotless as she usually leaves it. I doubt it will stay that way long!

So far we have gone through 4 months of mail (!), renewed car and utility trailer tags, had dinner with our oldest son and his family, lunch with the second son and daughter, and talked to our third son. I also picked up more allergy drops and got my Viking sewing machine looked at. Oh, and I had a birthday with a lovely dinner! Now I am in the midst of planning Thanksgiving dinner (planned for Wednesday) along with practicing for our church choir concert in a few weeks. Enough to keep busy, for sure!

Gave up running – just staying put

I made it through DFW, though it was a long tiring day. We arrived at Lale Catherine State Park on Wednesday. The sites are all long, but the one we reserved (number 46] was too unlevel to work for us. Since the campground was pretty empty, we just moved to another site (number 45). We also took a look at the forecast for Hot Springs and for Red Bay, and we decided o just give up on running before the storm! We are staying out until they go away, so we aren’t leaving until tomorrow (Sunday). I was absolutely exhausted on Thursday. All the driving, especially through DFW, added to not sleeping well because I decided to try a Claritin D instead of my normal Claritin, took a huge toll on me. I was tired and sore and DONE with doing 400+ miles a day, three days in a row, in a motorhome.

We had to change sites at the campground because where we were was reserved for the next couple of days. We ended up farther uphill in the trees instead of right at the lake, but the site is roomy, level, and quiet (site 8). It has rained and rained, so we just hung around the motorhome the first day. Yesterday I took a spa day, appropriate since We were in Hot Springs. I had a short Swedish massage, a facial, and a foot scrub at Quapaw Spa on Bathhouse Row at the National Park,  and it was lovely. We had a nice dinner at a German restaurant, and I feel rejuenated. Right now it is pouring down rain, but it is supposed to stop by noon or so. It is also warming up to almost 70, so we intend on doing some sightseeing before we leave. Rest does amazing things.

Change in plans – running from the storm

Just in case anyone in the US is unaware, the weather this winter is terrible pretty much anywhere. That is a sarcastic comment BTW, but it is certainly appropriate for our home in Iowa and pretty much everywhere we have been this winter. In Arizona it was a good 10-15 degrees colder than usual, and very wet. We took off Monday from White Tank Mountain Park by Phoenix, heading to Alabama. We spent last night at a lovely campground in the small town of Van Horn, TX, just down I-10 from ElPaso. The Van Horn Campground used to be a KOA, but it is immensely better than the KOA we stayed at in Benson. Plus it was a lot less expensive, a bonus. However it was cold there too with a low of 24. That is awfully low for a town 30 miles from the Mexican border. We took a look at the weather this morning, and left early to run in front of the sleet and snow that was heading our way. We chose a totally different route than we had planned. We decided to take I-10 to US 67 to Abilene and back to I-20. I admit I was not fond of the 150 or more miles of 2 land roads through oil country, and I am exhausted after 420 miles driving. We are spending the night at a Walmart in Eastland, 40 miles east of Abilene. Tomorrow we go through the DFW area to end up on I-30. We have reservations at Lake Catherine State Park for 2 nights.

Christmas done and we are out of Iowa

Christmas was fun, being with family and having a relaxing holiday. I got to be in a fun Christmas church choir concert, went to a grand daughter’s piano recital. Nick, my son in law, and I made Christmas dinner for my daughter’s co-workers at the hospital. It went well – ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans with mushrooms and bacon, sage cornbread dressing. The day after Christmas I found I came down with shingles. What a letdown!

After Christmas we had to do such really important tasks like get haircuts and a massage before heading off to California. We left on Friday, 28 December. Cedar Falls was having some snow, so we left at 10:15, later than we planned originally to let the snow plows get the roads salted. I-80, I-70, and I-40 were all having problems so we decided to head straight south through Missouri. It was a good idea. We ended up staying in Emporia, KS at a La Quinta that was ok. We like La Quintas because they accept pets without an extra charge. The trip was uneventful, always a good thing.

Today we drove a very long way, from Emporia, KS to Odessa, TX. We left by 7:00 in the dark. Luckily there was a Starbucks next door to the La Quinta! With the weather still being iffy on I-40 and north, we decided to take the longer but safer trip on I-20 to I-10. Let me say I am definitely not a fan of the Texas plains. I normally don’t mind remote, isolated land, but this just didn’t warm me up at all. However I was astonished at the activity in the Permian Basin around Midland. There were dozens and dozens of “RV Parks” being used for worker housing. The amount of activity was amazing. I have never seen so many active drilling rigs, and I have been through North Dakota and the Uinta Basin drilling areas.

Tomorrow we will spend the night west of Tucson, and then we are spending a week in Needles in the motorhome! Normally I would just plan on spending time dry camping somewhere, but with the Government shutdown going on indefinitely, I am worried about the closure of public land and increased demand for private campground so we just booked a full hookup site for the week. We can visit Mohave and Joshua Tree areas from there, plus the Lake Havasu/Bullhead area.

So in summary, lovely month at home, but we are ready to travel again.