No lights, but movin' on....

Thursday,
 We spent last night in a WalMart pking lot with a half dozen or so other RV's This was a very restful night, we both slept like babies. The Interstate, I-10, which we're now traveling, was far enough away that it didn't bother us and the town, La Cruces, NM,was quiet.
We had a great trip on Hwy 90,

 Here's a few pics of the territory we were traveling through. The vastness and the beauty of it really can't be captured in a picture!

Tuesday night we made our stop at a rest area about 8 miles east of Marfa, TX. Marfa is a very small town but is well known for the mysterious lights that often are seen in the sky off to the south, southwest. The rest area is where they are viewed from and is very popular to travelers and locals . I won't bore you with the history and the theories but the phenomenon is real and the theories abound. We got there about noon so we had lots of time to relax.

Here we are parked, waiting for "The Lights". This rest area was very clean and well kept with a trail leading to bronze markers explaining the history of the area and  some of the theory of the 'lights'.







While we were there Mo took pictures of some of the flowers that seemed to be everywhere, but you had to look for them or you would walk right past them.

 About the size of you're thumbnail.

 How do they grow?? Zero moisture, dirt and rocks.......???

 Kinda looked like violet leaves, they had a soft velvet texture.

There were lots of Cacti in the park area too,

Fianally the sun was setting, we had eaten dinner and we got our chairs and went to sit on the veranda of the building to watch for the lights. Probably a dozen or so people were already there talking and speculating, waiting and watching the horizon. More folks were in the parking lot watching from their cars and the whole atmosphere was kind of a quiet party.





Well we never saw any lights, kind of disappointing but they don't appear always and there hasn't been any kind of regularity to it so....maybe next time we pass through......
Next stop. Benson, AZ, where we'll stay for a couple of days.

Unbelievable!!

Here we are just driving along Hwy 90 through Texas. (We try to stay off the interstates as much as possible.)
This is looking out the windshield so they aren't the best but a picture can't show how vast and beautiful this country is.

We went through one Border Control stop when we were right along the border near Del Rio. The officers were polite but serious as they walked the dog around the MH. Drugs? Illegals? They didn't ask to come in but we sure would have let them. We thanked them for doing a good job and drove on.
And what should we see but.......

Now all you who are reading this will know we just had to stop, THIS was real history we could relate too! We pulled off hwy 90 onto the side road and found a place to park, which isn't always easy.
Here's a few pictures and commentary......

 I tried to get the historical plaque so all could read the "truth" about 'The Judge'.      Here's a picture of the saloon, this was actually the second saloon he built as the first was burned down. I think I read that it was just a canvas tent structure.

 This was posted inside the saloon. It seems the Judge was infatuated with a celebrity lady and named the saloon and 'opera house' after her. He sent her many invitations to visit but it was only after he died that she finally made the trip.

Inside the saloon, there were two rooms, the other was the pool room.     Kinda looked like the 'Judge Roy Beans' we all knew and loved....sniff, sniff.

 Here's a few pictures in the pool room. There was a glare coming through a window so even with Mo standing in front of it the glare still shows. (I think that's a compliment? Mo)

 These were three of the legs on the pool table, they were large and solid iron lions. The room was just big enough for the table and a few stools.









Here's the 'Judge' sitting in the middle. There were a lot of historical documents and artifacts in the museum that told the whole story.

 Outside the museum there was a walking tour of a cactus garden. There was every kind of cacti known, I think, with the uses that the native people had found for them, from dyes, medicines, smoke, jellies roofing, glues, all kinds of uses. How did they ever figure these things out ???
This working windmill was the center piece in the garden and it told the story of how it brought life to the desert for the settlers.



This picture is from where we were parked looking out over the vista. That is a canyon, about a 1/2 mile distant, dry now, that wound around. If you look you can see the worn out caverns in the wall. ( kind of center top). These were huge and must have taken thousands? maybe millions of years to form.
This was a great stop were we learned alot of interesting history.
Tonight we are staying in a town to the west of there called Sanderson, It also has Judge Roy Bean history. Seems the Judge first tried to set up his saloon here but the already established saloon owners put kerosene in the Judges Whiskey and beer and ran him out of town. This town, Sanderson, was then know as 'the town too mean for Bean' !

Hondo, TX 3/29-4/3

We arrived here from driving directly from CC, TX. We thought we might boon dock along the way but it was a nice drive and really wasn't very far. This is an Escapee's camp ground, with the spaces mostly owned and then rented out when the owners aren't here. We weren't sure if there would be one available but there were several and we got a good one and set up the rig. we planned to stay for three days and then move on but it's pretty comfortable here so we decided on a few more days. The area is pretty arid, not desert but very dry. The water table is way low so they're on a conservation program which basically means no car washing and grass watering. People do it anyway but .....
Here's a couple of pics of where we're staying.
Here I'd just finished cleaning the Motor home up some.

 The clubhouse, kitchen,pool room and general activity center. Also in here is a huge library of books covering everything and every subject. We had several we left here but we replenished our personal library to last several weeks while heading west.

 The Lone Star Corral SKP Park  Hondo,Texas

As you can see from the opening pictures, this is, or was a big train stop for farm products and passengers. That must have been a while back, trains don't stop here, they fly by at about 60 mph! long trains, loaded down with everything, coal, tankers, shipping containers, autos, grain cars, and about every 20 -30 minutes!

 This train was moving ! it way gone before the camera could reset for another picture!

This area has a lot of history, the town dates back to the late 1700's and early 1800's. We're between Hondo and D'Hanis , actually closer to D'hanis but it's real small. We decided to geocache some and some of the caches were in D'Hanis so we got to explore the area some. Now the really great thing about cacheing is they are usually located someplace you would never go to just visiting the area as an outsider. This was true again here! We had a travel bug that we needed to relocate in a cemetery so we found one in Hondo. This was way back in a rural neighborhood of shanty's and dirt yard hooches, for lack of a better term, but typical of the area. Some really old graves but the cemetery was very well maintained. Then we went to find the D'Hanis sites. One was also in a cemetery and that one was really old, here's some pics we took....

 There were actually graves that just had old wood crosses, some rotted and fallen over. Some were from the very early 1800's and families/decedents had added additional new markers with dates and period notes. The ground was dry and hard and large cracks went all around the area so markers were leaning every which way. This was Holy Cross Cemetery

Here's Mo reading one of the markers.
We left this place feeling as though we had visited a special place. We drove a short distance and both gasped at what was ahead.

It was an old stone church, obviously, but it was so beautiful in it's crumbling majesty.
We drove up to it and it was built in the 1800's, St Dominic's, by the French and German settlers. The limestone was quarried by hand and it was all built by hand. Some of the remaining stone window sills and headers were huge and showed how tough and dedicated these first families were.

 If you look you can see the cacti growing up in the high opening. We couldn't decide if this was a big window or if maybe the bell hung here since there seems to be a window below. There was a big bell on the ground next to the church.

Along the North side there was the cemetery of the original families. Some had the history of the person engraved on the headstone or iron cross. One such told the story of how the man died fighting the Indians, another had died in the War with Mexico.

This was real U.S.A history, not book stories and you could feel the presence of the souls here.
While exploring we found the Catholic church, Holy Cross, the third Catholic church here, the first being St Dominics', second St Josephs' and then the third, after St Joes burned, Holy Cross. This is where we attended Mass on Saturday evening. The Priest was 75 yo and was very conservative but very active and had built the area Catholics strong and devout.
Tomorow morning, Monday, we will leave heading west on Highway 90. We're trying to stay off the interstate as much as we can and enjoy the trip.

CC,TX Part II

It's now Sunday evening and we've seen about all of Corpus Christi, TX and the surrounding towns. 

CC wasn't on our original trip plan but back before Christmas there was an email sent out to a running forum announceing a fatass run here. It's not what you might be thinking ! It is a loosly organized run that costs nothing to participate in BUT you get no support, t-shirt or recognition. It's an 'unofficial' event. Someone will put a course together and a bunch of folks will meet at a designated time and someone will say, "Go".
This was the brain child of a young lady who mostly bikes but has recently gotten into distance running. Her dream was to run the circumference of Corpus Christi Bay, a distance of 65.8 miles. As we left FL I emailed her and asked if it was still on and she welcomed me to come, so our route was diverted south to be here for the run.

 

Alissa did get these nifty stickers made for us. Sadly she injured herself and had the flu so she couldn't even participate

We all met at 5am Saturday morning under a huge bridge connecting Padre Island with the main land. The police agreed to escort us across the bridge since there is only a narrow emergency lane. It was dark !!

I'm behind the two orange girls.

I won't bore you with a long diatribe, by the time we got across the big bridge, (The JFK Bridge) we were pretty spread out. I had pulled up with a guy named John and we stuck together the whole way. We never saw any of the others again except one relay team that we would leap frog their van but the runners never passed us. 

 Mo took this shot of me, she supported me all the way, from 5am start to 10pm? finish. This was taken after we got off the ferry, she had gotten me a BLT from Sonic and it was so good I wolfed it down, just what I needed at 45 miles! Then she brought out a cherry limeaid, sweet, sour, cold and full of sugar. YUM ! John's wife and his son and daughters were also following him so between the two wives we were well taken care of !

Her we are as we ran down the road after dark, at first we didn't have flash lights, we had forgotten to get them from the car, so we were running using the lights from our red flashing lights. We could see ok, we thought. We met the girls and we got the lights and John's wife said she thought she just ran over a big snake as she turned into the pull off area. As John and I left sure enough there was a huge snake slowly crawling off the road, in the Emergency lane where we were running, He was hurt bad but was definitely dangerous, a big rattle snake! His rattles were broken off in the road and his mid section looked hurt, had we come up on him with out the lights.... well no telling what could have been! We still had 10 miles to go so off we trudged. By now both of us had tired legs and knees and had blisters on the bottoms of our feet so we were reduced to running for 6 minutes and walking for 2, it worked ok but our feet were so sore that it was hard to get going again. But we made it !!

Here we are, finished !  My wonderful wife had me an ice cold beer for my reward, how much better can it get ?

All in all I feel pretty good today, a bit sore but that will pass. About 5pm we got to talking about the snake and decided we'd go see if it might have died close to the road and sure enough it was just off the road in the weeds...DEAD  We pulled it out with a rod I had and snapped a few pics. It was a bit stiff so i couldn't get it straightened out but, well it was big!

 It's hard to see but that's 42" and not even straight! and without the rattles !

 At the widest point it was about 3", this serpent could hurt cha!

So tomorrow we leave here, on a more direct course to California for our start date in May. I'm sure there will be more adventures so check back and see where Our Tour is.