Mess with Texas

 

Swooping down into El Paso from southern New Mexico, we were thinking about Beto O'Rourke and his work, energizing Texas minorities, standing up for migrants rights and pushing for gun control.

Testing the charge from solar panels at Harbor Freight

 At Harbor Freight the Hispanic clerk beamed when I said we came to El Paso to see Beto. We were there to swap out a failed solar panel controller, which they did, no questions asked.  Then we were off to refuel the cooler, finding both a Whole Foods and a Sprouts nearby.  Coronado high school students packed the Whole Foods at the noon hour for pizza slices and Kombucha.  After testing the solar controller in the parking lot, we headed east on I-10 towards Fort Davis and the state park there.  At 5000 feet elevation,we were in for a chilly night..

Davis Mountain State Park

Note on Texas state parks:   Many, but not all, Texas state parks charge a $6/person/day entry fee plus a separate charge for camping.  Buying a $70 Texas state park entry pass gets you into the park and gives you a half price discount on your second camping night stayed.  We bought the pass as it will pay for itself in about 5 camping days for the two of us.



We drove by the McDonald Observatory up in the Davis Mountains then pulled into the state park for two nights, paying for a site with electric because our camper battery was exhausted.  With the new solar panels, we hoped we'd be more prepared for camping at primitive sites in Big Bend National Park.

It's a long slog south to Rio Grande Village at the south east corner of Big Bend.  We walked some canyons and visited the hot springs there, staying 3 nights. Entry fee waived because I have a lifetime senior pass, and daily camping rate was halved to only  $7 per day.

Windy in the canyon

Evening light

Hot Springs

We had some good hikes there in Big Bend.  The wind really whips down the canyons in the afternoons.  Right at the river we kept seeing trinkets and walking sticks left by Mexicans with a little jar for the money.  They canoe or swim across the little Rio Grande and place these objects on the US side then retreat to watch for a sale to be made.  The park personnel and the border patrol tried to stop this illegal entry but according to the park ranger, they decided to just give up and let it go.

Trinkets for sale. Notice the "No Wall" hiking stick.

It is kinda crazy anyhow, the idea of a border in a place where historically, for hundreds of years, people have walked and swam back and forth doing commerce and agriculture.

The coyotes cry every night. We caught a picture of this one as we left the park.

On December 10 we drove north then east into high desert scrub land.  Marathon, Dryden, Langtry (Judge Roy Bean), to a picnic area at the Pecos River.  When traveling through country where the stops are many miles apart, I like to keep track as to how far we are from the next town and possible gas stops.  In Texas, the state highways do not have mile markers so I couldn't track where we were between towns. Signage seems to be minimal.  While gas is cheap and taxes are low in Texas, there are some things that the government just does not fund... like signage and trash cleanup and smooth roads.  On the 85 mile stretch of highway 90 between Bracketville and Hondo the road was so rough that I had to limit my speed to 60. It was so jumpy the cruise control (we call it the autopilot) would not stay engaged. 

As we bumped our way east into land more populated with ranches and small towns we started seeing garbage on the road side and trash in the parks and picnic areas. Clearly somebody WAS messing with Texas.  South of Comstock the roadsides are littered with road kill:  deer, armadillos, rabbits, and javelinas.  I guess those counties don't have the budget to clean up the carnage.  Most of the pick up trucks sported hefty grill guards, to protect them from the night time collisions with game. 

Camping at a rest stop overlooking the Pecos River

It got a little cold that night.

We saw lots of trailers loaded with ATVs that had towering deer stands welded on top. Get your gun, four wheel it out into the country, climb up on your shooting tower, and blast away.  Towns advertised corn bait and deer blinds.  Taxidermy and meat processing shops were everywhere.  We read that Texas has 3.6 million white-tailed deer and that the overpopulation problem is intense.  Evidently there aren't enough wolf, cougar, coyotes and bears to keep the numbers at a healthy level. Man is the top predator now in the west Texas hill country. 

In every small town and on many of the gates to the ranches we'd see the American flag, the Texas flag, and occasionally a Trump banner.  Soon the mesquite and shrub land led into the outskirts of sprawling San Antonio.  We found AJ at the US Storage Center on the west side of the city and dropped off the pop up tent trailer in the lot. 
 

San Antonio loves these fly-overs on the freeway.

Our phones were finally working so we let them guide us to our little airbnb casita near the airport.  After unloading, we headed back out and downtown to see the famous river walk.  What a splendid experience it was to visit at night with all the Christmas lights.  The place was packed but magical.  We strolled along, margaritas in hand, staying out later then we've done in quite a while.  
 

San Antonio river walk.

The bed was soft. The airplanes roared overhead.  The next day we spent sorting and packing and got ourselves down to a big luggage bag and a couple of carry-ons.  We ran the truck back out to the storage lot and left it there, taking a fast Uber home to the casita and ribs and champagne in bed.  We tried Uber again for an early morning ride to the airport but the app told us that there was no guarantee that a driver would pick up the task so we called a regular taxi and arrived at the airport three hours ahead of our flight.  

At the counter.... this is the make or break moment we were waiting for.  Our problem was that we had a fragile accordion and a fragile ukulele and a fragile laptop and one giant checked bag.  The attendant weighed the big bag.  It clocked in at 50 pounds... 5 pounds to spare.  The accordion was shoved into a carry-on sized bag.  It clocked in at 30 pounds....8 pounds over.  The clerk shook his head and said we'd have to check that bag.  We said "no", and opened it up to show him the accordion nestled in the bag with soft clothing packed around it.

Since we had space in the big bag we opted to remove some clothing from the carry-on and put it into the big bag.  We re-weighed the carry-on and it was still over by a couple of pounds.  He looked at us, we looked at him, he looked around then told us to go ahead and carry it on.  I sighed with relief as not only was the carry on accordion bag too heavy but it exceeded the 9 x 14 x 22 maximum size.  Then there was the ukulele.  Technically, it was too long to be a carry on.  Connie was hugging it to her chest and told the clerk that there was no way it was going under the plane.  He waved us through with a grunt.  

Remember the Alamo?  Where we stole land from Mexico and they came here and took it back?

On boarding, we found the first open overhead bin and shoved the accordion and ukulele inside.  Then we sat watching the plane fill up and the last group boarding having their carry-on luggage taken below because there was no more room in the overhead.  Shoulder to shoulder, knees touching the seats in front of us, we tried to be small for two hours of miserable confinement while the Airbus A320 rocketed over the desert landscape toward the megalopolis of 8 million souls that is Ciudad de México.

 

Free at last!