We take our road trips slow and leisurely. After we left Arizona on March 11, the next major stop we had planned was Port Aransas, on the Gulf Coast of Texas. We arrived at Port A on Tuesday, April 1. It was 1,600 miles in 21 days -- just about right, we think!
The first night after Tombstone, we stayed in Vado, NM, halfway between Las Cruces NM and El Paso TX. We love New Mexico, but not this part of it. There was nothing really to recommend the park either, except that it was there when we wanted to stop and we had a pull-through site, so that we didn't have to unhook in order to park.
The next afternoon we arrived at Balmorhea State Park (Texas), the home of San Solomon Springs. It's an oasis in the desert flatlands. There is a huge V-shaped swimming pool, built by Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, said to be the biggest spring-fed pool in the world. At about two acres in size, it's certainly the biggest swimming pool of any kind that we've ever seen. And what a lot of fun to swim in. A little cool at 75 degrees, but really worth it. The CCC also built Spanish-style overnight tourist cabins in the park. The cabins have been upgraded as a motel and the State Park now operates it along with the RV Park/Campground. Pretty fancy for a State Park! We stayed a couple of nights here. There is a wetland restoration project and therefore a lot of birds. http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us
Our next stop was in Alpine Texas at the very nice Lost Alaskan RV Park. http://www.lostalaskan.com We stayed three nights. It got terribly windy while we were here and so we didn't do too much exploring this time. Alpine is one of the funky little places where we also stayed stayed a couple of years ago on our way to Big Bend. You can drive from here to Marfa, an old Texas town where you are supposed to be able to see alien lights in the distance. We never saw them, but it was fun to watch the true believers. This is a very interesting part of Texas with a kind of liberal old-hippy vibe. You are far more likely to see political signs urging you to vote for Kinky Friedman than for George Bush. Being old Eugeneans, we feel quite at home here.
Our next stay was at Del Rio, near the Amistad Reservoir (on the US/Mexico border). Our RV park was old but adequate and the new owners and managers are working hard to upgrade it further. www.americancampground.net Because there were so many people out and about for the Easter Holiday and Spring Break, we ended up staying here for 8 nights.
Del Rio is a not a bad a little town -- it is smaller than it's neighbor across the border, Ciudad Acuna in the state of Coahuila, Mexico, but has everything you need in a city. We like to visit Acuna because it is safe and not touristy at all. (Because not many tourists go to Del Rio.) Most of the shops and the places to eat are those the people of Acuna patronize -- not so much of the touristy stuff you see on the Mexican border towns near Tucson or San Diego.
On Good Friday, we walked there from a Del Rio parking lot across the International Bridge. (It's about a two-mile walk across and into the downtown.) Although we hadn't planned it, we arrived during the Good Friday procession, part of the Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebration.
We followed along with the procession for a time, until we got thirsty (being the Heathen Vagabonds that we are) and so then we headed for a nearby cantina.
We had fun just people-watching in the Plaza. There were a lot of visitors from the surrounding countryside in the big city for the Easter Weekend holiday. We ate at a good restaurant (for a very reasonable price) before heading back to the bridge for the two mile walk home.
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Our next stop was Falcon Lake, between the tiny towns of Zapata and Roma. Falcon Lake is about 60 miles long, formed by damming the Rio Grande. This is another nice Texas state park (50A electric, sewer connection at each site) and one where you feel more eccentric for not carrying binoculars than you do carrying them! It really is a birding paradise. This picture shows two Caracaras (Mexican Eagles). The desert was in bloom and it was lovely to walk on the many paths around the campground.
We stayed a week. It would be fun to have a boat here, because Falcon is such a good fishing lake. (But there's essentially no culture, no town, no shopping -- so not a place we could stay for a long time.) A huge bass fishing tournament was going on while we were there. There is a lot of money in this sport -- lots of fancy rigs. One fisherman said he had traveled over 18 hours the day before and almost as long the day before that to get to Zapata for the tournament. He has a different definition of road-trip than we do!
it was beginning to get quite warm by the end of our stay at Falcon Lake and we were glad to move on to the Coast. Right now the weather here in Port A is perfect.
If we had to choose only one spot in Texas to stay, it would definitely be in this area. (Last winter, we stayed just across the bay in Fulton.)
But we had a lot of fun exploring on our way and, after all, that's the reason we drag our house behind us.
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