Fort Stockton, TX

We left the Austin Lone Star RV Park about 9:45 am today after a breakfast the Park put on of pancakes and biscuits with gravy.  Eating with the Park made packing up to leave easier with fewer dishes and no cooking.  Snoopy was unhappy with us because the first of the month is his day to get flea and heartworm medicine applied to the nap of his neck.  That is NOT his idea of fun but I can hardly believe it really feels like anything other than a wet liquid that he can feel.  After hiding around the coach for a few minutes he forgave us!

It is foggy on the road this morning as far as we can see which isn’t much beyond half a mile.  There’s lots of traffic even on a Saturday morning.  A storm is expected here on Sunday that will yield lots of rain and cold temperatures.  We’ll miss it in Austin, but suspect we will run into it later today as we head to Fort Stockton for the night.  Each mile will bring us closer to the desert terrain of western Texas. We saw a really great map of the state yesterday at the museum that portrayed the inches of rain the state receives per year.  It was easy to see how the vegetation will be impacted going west with nicely delineated stripes of lighter and lighter greens as the annual rainfall decreases along our route just below the Panhandle of Texas.

By 11:00 am we are out of the fog and into blue skies with wispy white clouds.  We pass Pedernales Falls where Jim went swimming in the pool at the base of the falls with his buddy Charles in high school driving up from San Antonio about an hour and a half away.  We are coming down out of hill country passing little towns and the light blonde fields of winter grass where cattle graze.  We pass the “Lighthouse Vacation Rentals”-a lighthouse looking structure high on a hill, before reaching Johnson City-the hometown of President Lyndon B. Johnson where his ranch is located a few miles outside of town and is now a State Park (in the two photos above.)  We are on the Texas Hill Country Trail.  Now there are vineyards and wineries with tasting rooms just off the highway on both sides and we are in Wine Country interspersed with Peach Orchards with a few just starting to bloom with light pink blossoms.  We also see lots of windmills and the Eureka Thoroughbred Farm with their horses grazing in the sun.

We pass through Fredericksburg, TX in the two photos below, with both a heavy German population and an Amish population at lunchtime.  We stop at a What-A-Burger thinking we’ll grab a quick lunch, but it is brand new and they are not yet open.  Darn!  However, the manager gives us two coupons for a free burger.  Yippee!  The town itself is quaint with old style buildings and the sidewalks are filled with tourists on a Saturday afternoon.  If we were not on a travel deadline, it would be nice to walk the streets and explore the shops.  We’ll have to put this town down as a stop on the return trip!  Beyond the town we see “live oaks” in abundance along the highway, across the rolling hills beyond and lining fences beside the pastures still waiting to produce new leaves on their silvery limbs.   Our progress is slow on this road going due west to meet I-10 as it comes north from San Antonio, but far more interesting as we get to view the actual towns, ranches and countryside of this part of Texas.

We reach I-10 at 1:10 pm and have 211 miles to go.  My body is suggesting “nap time” or cookies, but there is no time today if we want to reach the Fort Stockton RV Park by dark.  At 2:00 pm we are 165 miles from Fort Stockton and the highway has turned into long down hill grades and gentle assents through low rolling hills green with what look to me like a version of a cypress tree.  The sky has clouded over and we are catching up with what appears to be the beginnings of the weather front we are expecting to meet.  Puff is taking all of this in stride and doing well as we cruise down the road.  Traffic is light and I have pushed back my desire to join Snoopy in a nap with a cup of coffee.

By 3:15 the landscape is looking more like one Mesa after another with the trees converting over to a shrub appearance.  The temperature is dropping but as of yet we are still escaping the rain carried in dark gray, moisture-laden clouds above the coach.  I-10 stretches like a light black ribbon through the hills for miles in front of us with no sign of civilization anywhere and only a few cars or trucks to reassure us we have not been transported mysteriously to some unoccupied planet.

An hour later and we are seeing orange and black “baby” oil well pumps that seem half the size of usual black pumps we’ve seen elsewhere.  Wind generators cover entire tops of flat mesas ahead of us to the left and right.  We are 33 miles from our destination for the day and blue sky is appearing.  We have missed the promised storm with “nary a drop” of rain.  At this point after seven hours of driving, Jim is really ready to quit for the day!  And Snoopy?  Well, he’s sound asleep behind me.  He’ll be up and raring to go as soon as we stop.  Like Paul Harvey says, “and now you know the rest of the story.”