Rolling through the Mid-South

Yesterday, we departed Gahanna around 3PM. Today, we are camping in Texas – Atlanta, Texas more specifically. About 650 miles and we finally hit on some wonderful weather. The first roadside rest stop in Texas had free WiFi which we used to download the latest park guide. We were hoping for at least some little clue as to which parks themselves had WiFi, but this is still lacking. It is as if the park system still considers this amenity as untested and of unknown demand. The powers that be should stop by some of these parks and see the huddled masses in the sacred WiFi zones trying to get and keep a signal while pounding out the latest email and twitters. Then they would no longer withhold such precious information from us digerati.

Maybe we will stay a while here on Lake Wright Patman – sounds a little Air Force-y, no? We arrived in the dark and had to register our own selves, and find our own site. Tomorrow will be the reckoning day with the park rangers. Since this our first camp site of this trip, it is due in no small part to how wonderful we found the park rangers in Texas last year.

The ranger interaction is, however, going somewhat less spectacular this time. We called about the availability of sites on Goose Island, where we watched the Whooping Cranes last year, but were handled very rudely by a lady who wouldn't give us the time of day. A couple of calls later, we finally found out that there are no sites until April – “All right? Good by.” must be oh-so nice to have virtually infinite demand and a very finite supply.

Seminole Canyon St Pk, TX

The weather in New Mexico and nearby areas in Texas was about to turn cold again, so Morty rolled another big day -- about 440 miles big -- back to Seminole Canyon on the Rio Grande. And just like it is supposed to turn out, it is gloriously warm as the Sun fixes to do some setting in the West, right out our front porch.

This time, the park seems just about full with other warmth seeking RVers.  One reason we returned was that when we stopped here on the way out, we were again eluding the cold, and had to leave after just one night when there were lots of canyons and rivers to be explored. Tomorrow promises to be warm enough to revisit that missed opportunity. The temperature is dropping rapidly in the dark though, as I go outside periodically to reestablish the elusive WiFi signal.

WiFi is all we have here. No TV or Cell service. The restrooms are very nice though, with ample soap in the washrooms. We arrived after the rangers closed shop for the day at 5PM. Though, since we had called ahead, they had a space with our name on it waiting for us. Texas Rangers are the best.

Hueco Tanks State Park, Texas

Morty left Balmorhea this morning, after a brief stop at the ranger station WiFi to upload yesterday’s blog. Then it was straight through for about 250 miles, not all of them West, to take us to today’s destination, Hueco Tanks – about 30 miles East of El Paso, far into west Texas. Today Morty celebrates rolling over 10,000 miles with us since May. We drove scenic route 1111 about 40 miles North from I-10 which gave us quite a few memorable mountain views.

The trouble with the back roads is that you never know how far you are from fuel. As we were approaching both our destination and that problematical fuel gauge “E” I asked Miss Garmina where the nearby fueling places might be found. Fortunately, she knew that we had to drive past the Hueco turn-off about 5 miles and then backtrack. The last prior gas station we passed was over 90 miles back. I would have been really uncomfortable setting up camp with too little fuel to run the generator. So another word of praise for Garmin and the credit card company that gave it to us for opening a new account that hasn’t been used since.

We were surprised at the amount of Saturday truck traffic on I-10 – much more than we had experienced recently. Again on this drive we saw snow remaining from the storm two nights ago, but as the day wore on the temperatures did climb into the upper 50s and if you were in direct sun you were plenty warm. The wind out of the North dying down was probably the biggest factor in becoming more comfortable – all a combination of the storm moving further east while we drove further west.

As we crossed over the Sierra Diablo Mountains we entered the Mountain Time zone. Unbelievably, this is my first experience in Mountain Time – Lynne says it is like most other time zones -- give or take an hour. That was a little unexpected bonus to lengthen our day. This means that it took us two weeks to cross the Central Time zone -- for those playing along at home.

Hueco  [say Waco and be done with it] Tanks is both a unique archaeological site and a magnet for rock climbers from all over the country. On weekends year-round, the park fills up with climbers and many are turned away or sitting on the side of the road waiting for others to leave. Camping also requires a reservation, and many of the motor home/trailer sites are filled with tent campers intent on maximizing their climbing experience.

A pretty big show is made of having a ranger on the road several miles before the park entrance turning away all without the proper advance arrangements by radioing “headquarters.” Headquarters is staffed by one ranger gal who handles the phone inquiries and reservations, climbing inquiries and passes, registering new campers, and singing up participants for the park tours as well as tracking the work of the ranger out on the road and responding to his queries – I guess having a list out on the road would get out of date or something else bad. This is probably why it took us about five tries to get through on the phone yesterday.

Not to underplay the archaeological rock art and artifacts, this was also a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail in the 1860s between St. Louis and San Francisco. The ruins of that building are next to the 1898 adobe Escontrias Ranch house that serves as the park’s interpretive center. All visitors must watch a 15-minute video explaining the significance of the park’s treasures and delicateness of its environment in this center. You are issued a wallet card good for one year meaning that the video requirement is waived if you return in the next year.

There is an abundance of contrails in the sky, indicating that we are under a major east-west high altitude jet route [my flight training is failing me as to the proper term].  Lynne has been fascinated with the cactus colors and flowers – we will need to learn a little more about them. Tomorrow morning we will be joining a ranger to walk through the rock art of the mountains here – perhaps then we can get our questions answered.

As amenities go, this park has electric and water, extremely quiet and picturesque sites, recent plumbing, though no soap in the restrooms, one shower per gender, WiFi only at the Interpretive Center and ranger station, Sprint on analog roaming, and no television.

Goliad State Park, Texas

This morning as we departed Brazos Bend, we were stopped by a tree that had fallen across the road. It didn't leave enough room for Morty to get by although smaller trucks could make the squeeze. We were stranded until the calls could be put into the maintenance folks who soon arrived in legion with power saws and a front-end loader to make quick work of the clean-up. This is the only road into the park and the tree had to have fallen after these guys reported for work. No harm, no foul -- but we wonder what if we were just a little earlier and said tree had drawn a bead on our beloved Morty.

Morty selected Goliad, because of its perfect distance from Brazos Bend -- 174 miles, and the Galveston and Gulf coast parks in that range were still rebuilding from Hurricane Ike. The magic in using criteria like that is that you open yourself up to discoveries of perfect little gems that would so easily get missed. Goliad is the perfect example. This tiny little park on the San Antonio river has only 20 pull-thru sites plus a few cabins, tent sites, and 20 more electric-only sites across the highway. But the main attraction is the restored mission complex from the 1700's. These meager ruins were reconstructed by the CCC in the 1930's and stand today as a beautiful reminder of how this country first developed.



With the sky as clear as a bell, we re-evaluated the likelihood of spending more time in Texas and opted for the $60 annual pass. If the weather improvement was not enough, the decision was made even easier when the ranger pointed out that some other parks have higher per-day charges that would lower the break even point further than the $6 charges that we had encountered so far. After that we noticed that the weather in New Mexico was still rather wintery while Texas would probably be much warmer and clearer.

We continue to be very favorably impressed by the Texas Park Rangers and other park personnel. Boy, they couldn't be any friendlier or more helpful. Even though Lynne and I were the only visitors in sight, the ranger running the museum gave us all the spiel we wanted about the history and life style of the mission, and came and sought us out again when the local volunteers were putting on a spinning and weaving demonstration. You just could not ask for better ambassadors of your state -- Well done, Texas!

Since tomorrow is Friday, and experiencing the limited capacity of the parks of Texas so far. And with the recommendation of the ranger gals who checked us in, we phoned for reservations for the next couple of coastal parks we were interested in: Goose Island and Mustang Island. Goose was already full for Friday, and Mustang was down to its last two sites. So we booked Mustang Island for the next two nights to get through the week-end.