day96

Day 96 (November 24, 2006) - Texas

It was a tough decision but it had to be taken. Reluctantly, we have decided to forego New Mexico (White Sand Dunes, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos), and take I-10 through Texas and the deep South. The alternative was I-40 and the not-so-deep South through Oklahoma City, Memphis and so on. We are going instead to Big Bend National Park, then on to Houston, New Orleans, Savannah... Many of you will think we have made the wrong choice, but I'll let you in on a little secret. We have already made plans for another trip to New Mexico next year. There is a little corner of Utah/Arizona that we skipped on this trip (Glen Canyon, Lake Powell, Page, the Petrified Forest National Park), and we will also include Santa Fe and the surrounding pueblos in that occasion. We know for a fact that we will not come back to the South in the future, so we might just as well see it now and be done with it.

So, we are driving again through the never-ending Chihuahuan desert, this time though with oil rigs and water wells along the way. The fenced-in areas display signs that say: "Danger poisonous gas may be present". Oh nice. We drive through Pecos, TX - home of the world's first rodeo (wow ow). A strip of shanty houses along the main artery, the usual car repair shops, a laundromat, a liquor store/gas station, and a donut shop that advertises "Texas size donuts". Texas is big in every respect, including its support of the Bush administration, and they are proud of it. Giant McDonald's billboards on the highway in El Paso advertise a Texas size hamburger: I am sure that it is as tall as Petr and that you won't find anywhere else.

There's a small museum of all things Western in Pecos, with a big sign in front that says "Howdy". Outside the local lodge, another sign announces that the Optimists Club now meets on Wednesdays. You must have a really heaping dose of optimism to survive in a place like this. Not even the gas station at a crossing with the highway has survived, the building is decrepit with half of the corrugated sheet metal roof falling off, and the gas pumps are gone. We are pressing on through more desert to Fort Stockton.

We are approaching that part of Texas that on a map looks like an elbow wedged inside Mexico. Desert here and desert there - yuccas and agaves - bare mountains and a whole lotta nothin'. We are in the middle of nowhere, and you can tell because services are few and far between. The ride through the park is quite impressive though. We stop at the Visitor Center at Panther Junction to pick up a map and drive out of the park to sleep in the next town, Terlingua. We are trying to book a one-day river trip for tomorrow on the romantic Rio Grande. It just so happens that the campground is right across the street from the outfitter - how convenient - so we park the RV and book the trip in no time. We have enough time left over to explore the surroundings with the Vespa and we decide to go visit the mining ghost town of Terlingua. We drive a bit and approach an agglomerate of houses that look abandoned, but they don't have a mining feel to them. So we slow down enough to realize that they are indeed inhabited. We drive on a little longer, look around but we can't find any sign of a ghost town. I guess this must be the best ghost town in the world since you can't get to see it. We return to the campground, check the map and realize that we were on the wrong hwy. By now it's almost dark, but we will drive by it in the morning as we head to our river trip. In the campground, I take a short walk along a dirt road that goes somewhere beyond the mountains and I bump into my first road runner in the flesh. I had never seen one apart from the Wile E. Coyote cartoons and I thought they were slightly bigger. I tried to follow it but it was too quick, and I did not want to end up like the coyote myself.