Nine Texas Stops

It is hard to really fathom how big the state of Texas is. We traveled from South Texas to Southwest Texas; 9 stops and 1400 miles, and we didn’t come close to seeing the vast majority of the state. Mike likes to travel via the interstate for most of our trips, when possible, so we mostly traveled on I-10. Our first destination was Port Aransas, Texas. We love visiting this cute beach town, and especially enjoy the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center and camping I.B. Magee Beach Park. Being able to walk and/or bike everywhere we want to go and just relaxing at the beach, is a wonderful way to start our journey. Next, we stopped for a few days in San Antonio, which has such great bike trails, and of course the Riverwalk. South Llano River Park has also become a staple stop, as the four birding blinds always deliver opportunities to see beautiful birds. Fort Stockton is right off I-10, and has some interesting history, but was just a quick stop. Our next stop, Fort Davis, was a location we were looking forward to, as we were excited to visit the McDonald Observatory. In 2021, we stayed in this area, but were unable to visit and view the sky through their amazing telescopes, due to Covid. Mike joined the Friends of the Observatory to give us a better opportunity to be able to tour and see the amazing views from the “dark sky” in the Davis Mountains. Unfortunately, our evening tour of the 36 foot telescope was cancelled due to technical issues. They invited us to attend the Star Party instead, which was interesting, but too cloudy to see much with more standard telescopes. Fortunately, we did get to tour the 32 foot telescope on another day in the afternoon, which was pretty cool. While in Fort Davis, we stayed at the historic Prude Ranch for part of our stay. The ranch has been famous since 1897 for its camping, cabins, pool, and horses; primarily for groups. We also stayed at the nearby Davis Mountain again,which is really beautiful and we finally got to see our first montezuma quail! Occasionally, we will leave the RV parked at a campsite, and take a road trip in our truck. Since we were just a couple of hours away from Big Bend National Park, we booked a hotel room at the Chisos Mountain Lodge and had a lovely stay. It was really nice to have another chance to explore this huge park, which is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Hiking to “Balanced Rock” was something we hadn’t done during our last visit and was a lot of fun. We were hoping to see wild burros again in Boquilla Canyon, however, we just saw wild horses, which was still pretty sweet! Seeing Santa Elena Canyon, the Mule Ears Viewpoint, and the Chisos Window again, as well as all the other sights, definitely made it worth the trip. Balmorhea State Park was a new campground for us, and has the world’s largest spring-fed swimming pool. It was fun to swim and snorkel in this gorgeous clear water. Our final stop was Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Area in El Paso. Mike booked a tour of the pictographs in this park, which took us through a lot of tight places and some pretty spectacular views. The park has a lot of good hiking trails and birding, and is very popular with rock climbers.

New Mexico here we come!

(Side note: our website licensing fees are due in August, which due to cost, we are not going to renew. We decided to write a few more blogs until then. However, it is possible, we could have software issues, so our website may down before them. Thanks for following us! We are on Facebook, Instagram and Threads if you want to continue to follow our journey.)