Tales of West Texas

We have continued to wander about West Texas and are heading southeast to the Rio Grande Valley later today. When we last reported in, we were heading for Fort Davis State Park which is a wonderful campground in a little valley in the Davis Mountains. The wildlife is abundant there and even though you are not supposed to feed them, you can tell they are very used to mooching from campers. Molly has been around deer before, but she got several close-up views as you can see from the attached picture. There are also dog-eating javelinas (wild pigs for you non-Texans) who happened to be hanging around waiting for dinner. Imagine my surprise when we stepped down from the motorhome and saw four of them licking their chops as I started to take Molly for a walk that evening. Needless to say, we quickly retreated and waited for them to move on.

Next stop was in New Mexico at Carlsbad Caverns. I was there as a child but remembered very little of it. We did the walk-in route (instead of the elevator) so took about a 3 1/2 mile hike. It is absolutely amazing and we highly recommend you go out of your way to take in this National Park. We also recommend that you stay at a reputable place in Carlsbad, which we did not. We were taken in by a brochure advertising "Whites City" which is just outside the park entrance. This place was really neglected; most of the hook-ups were out of order; there was standing water (remember this is the middle of the desert, so you can only imagine the source of that water) and there were stickly-burrs which just jump into Molly's fur. It took us 2 days to get all the grass and burrs vacuumed out of the motorhome.

The best part was that we were able to spend time and dinners with some new friends we had met in Alpine at a New Years Eve party. Jo and Kevin were moving from Omaha back home to the San Francisco Bay area. Jo even made a berry pie from SCRATCH one evening! She also gave me motivation to get my galley a little more organized. We were able to enjoy their company for about 5 days as they moved on toward El Paso when we headed back to Alpine.

So we are off again. First stop is the Seminole Canyon State Park, then Brackettville (where the Alamo was filmed), Laredo, Falcon State Park and then finally arriving in Donna on Saturday to stay there about two weeks. For those of you who have worried about how much it costs for gas for this adventure now have something new to worry about. It has been chilly on this trip and the heat is generated by propane. We are spending about $50 a week on propane - who would have thought?? Let's hope South Texas provides a break in the weather!