Deep in the Heart of Texas

Our nightly sunset

What can I say about West Texas?  What a different, amazing place it is.  After a great month in the hill country we had no idea how much different it would be when we got further west.  We moved on to Fort Stockton which is a small place truly in the middle of nowhere.  It is full of history, and they seem to try very hard to promote themselves, but my description of it is "where the super Walmart isn't so super and the McDonalds sign reads 'over 100 served;'"  The RV park we were in sat right near the highway on top of the highest hill in town.  We could see the mountains in the distance and had the most amazing sunset every night.  The highway stretched as far as you could see, and while some people wouldn't have liked it, I loved watching the traffic go by, mostly trucks and RV's, knowing they were a long way from home, wondering where the road was taking them.  It was like hearing the long, slow whistle of a train off in the distance.

We decided that there was so much to see, but we couldn't get the RV into all of the remote places so we made a couple of overnight hotel trips so we wouldn't miss anything.   I guess West Texas can be divided into 2 categories - one, spectacular, breathtaking mountains and two, the energy industry.

Heading Underground

750 feet underground

Our first overnight was to White City, New Mexico.  If you were to look at it on a map, you probably couldn't even find it - but it was a great gateway for us.  The first day we did Carlsbad Caverns (which are actually in New Mexico).  We have been to caverns before, but this was truly incredible.  You walked into a cave in the side of a mountain and started walking down, and kept walking down farther than I could have imagined.  And the further you got, the more spectacular the scenery became.  There was room after room of formations and with a little imagination you could make something out of each one of them.  We took a tour where they took us down even further and turned off all the lights.  It is very creepy to sit in absolute darkness and silence and realize the you are 750 feet down inside the earth.  I was very glad when those lights came back on.  But not as glad as I was to get on the elevator so I didn't have to walk back out of the cave.

Cliff on the High Point of Texas

The next day Cliff did the high point of Texas.  The Guadalupe Mountains stretch between TX and NM, but Guadalupe Peak is in TX, and at an elevation of 8,751 feet it is their highest point.  It was an 8.4 mile hike with an elevation gain of 3,000 ft, so I decided it was time for us to have some "alone" time and let Cliff do it on his own.  I spent the day at the base of the mountain, walking some trails, reading and practicing driving the truck (I haven't done much of that on my own) and constantly looking up what looked like an impossible mountain, wondering where Cliff was. 

What you see if you climb to the top

He told me to plan on 8 hours, but he was back with me in 6 hours with a big smile on his face and lots of pictures to prove he had done it.  After that we started driving home and realized just what an amazing place we were in. The mountains went on forever..every corner you turned there was another mountain range coming into view.  We were like little kids grinning from ear to ear, just mesmerized at the beauty.

 Getting ahead of myself, but in keeping with the theme, a few weeks later we made a day trip to Big Bend National Park.  When we talked to people about going there I noticed that often they would shake their head and smile and say "oh yeah, Big Bend."  As we entered the park and the mountains started coming into view I understood just what they meant.  There aren't words to describe it.  We have seen lots of mountains in our lifetime and they all have their own beauty.  We are used to the mountains up North all covered in trees.  Down south in desert country, they are all naked.    They are just dirt and rock and brush, so you can see every nook and cranny, and depending on how the light is hitting them, they take on a whole new picture every turn you take.  I hate to overuse the word, but they were absolutely breathtaking.

After we left hill country, as we first drove into Fort Stockton, we started noticing the wind right away.  Cliff made the comment that they should harness the wind for power, half joking because we thought it was just that day's weather.  As we drove along, a few windmills came into view, and then a few more, and then a few more and then we realized that  we could see them no matter which way we looked, or how far we looked.  We also realized two other things...one that they were smart enough to set up wind farms and take advantage of it, and two, we were in for a windy couple of weeks.  And since the land is pretty barren, with few trees and very little scrub, with the wind came the sand and dirt.  There were days when the visibility seemed almost like a blizzard in the North, sand blowing everywhere.   And there is very, very little rain, if any.  Unfortunately in the time that we were there it rained for about 15 minutes one night..enough to turn all the sand covering everything into mud, but not enough to wash any of it away.  And there was no sense in trying to wash it off, because we knew the next day it would all just be back again.  I have come to learn that neither Cliff nor I are desert people.  We can't wait to get farther north so we can wash everything!!

And then there is the oil industry.  I had no idea.....   We always hear about the "oil barons" of Texas and see pictures of the little oil pumps bobbing up and down in a field...but really, I had no idea!!  Most of the areas are completely centered around the oil industry.  There are old, abandoned towns where the oil has dried up and booming areas where the wells are just being drilled, and everything in between.  They are everywhere.  As we drove along the back roads we could see the rigs being set up, passed many of the parts for them on trucks on the road to be delivered and if you drove at night each drilling rig was lit up like a rocket ship on the horizon and all of the small pumps had there own glow to them so you would swear it was an entire town you were looking at.  And then when you drove by in the morning you realized that it was all just open land covered in oil equipment.  We never used to be "museum' people, but we are finding that now that we have more time on our hands, we have the chance to stop and go thru the local museums where people just want to share their history and their lifestyle with you.  We did go to the Petroleum museum in Midland and it was fascinating to learn the whole process that we were watching unfold before us as we drove down the road.

At the top of a dried up
waterfall in Big Bend

On top of all of that, West Texas is full of history too.  I think one of the biggest realizations I had is just how important water is.  It sounds kind of silly, especially if you are from a place where water is plentiful.  But being here, not only in the desert, but during a drought, it is amazing to realize just what it means.  We would drive for miles where there was nothing, and then find a nice little, developed town, and realize that as the early settlers came across the country they stopped and settled in any place where they could find water.  We saw "oasis" towns where they had natural springs that are still flowing.  It was so weird to suddenly go from dirt and brush  to green lush farms.  And on the back of the motorcycle I could actually smell the water in the area - which made me realize how much even I was craving it.

Playing in the Sand Dunes

On top of all that, we spent St. Patrick's Day drinking beer and playing in the sand on top of Monahan's Sand Dunes, went to the WWII Airplane Museum, went to a hockey game and a small town fair, did lots of geocaching and spent an evening hanging out with some locals in a bar in a ghost town.  I knew this country was huge, and I knew it was beautiful, and when we left NY I hoped that we would get to see some new and different things that we had never seen before.  I am completely taken back by just how little I knew and how much there is to see and learn.   And I can't wait to see what comes next!!