Scenes from Highways Headed North

 We were in no hurry to get on the road this morning as we only had 160 miles to travel.  We will able to experience another beautiful sunrise in the Big Bend area  It seemed that the whole sky was telling us goodbye.  I took several pictures and am posting ones taken from each direction in the park.

North

West

South

Above and below - East

The motorhome had been setting for five days so we hoped it had built up some energy for the big hills that it faced.  It managed to make it up them all.

A final look east to the mountains of Big Bend.

We were on Rote 118 north when we had to go through this border check point.  The Border Patrol agent was young but nice.  He asked, "Is there just two of you in this vehicle?"  Carol said yes.  Then the agent said, "Thank you for your service."  Carol usually  wears his Air Force Veterans hat or it is setting on the dash in front of him.  Also, he had brought a small American flag with the blue stripe representing his support for law enforcement and it was laying on the dash.   I guess the agent could tell that Carol was an ok guy.

 

Final shots of 118 North before we turned east on Route 67.

For a little while we could still see mountains in the east but eventually it flattened out.

We passed a sign which read "Bridgestone Texas Proving Ground.  Of course, with the word Bridgestone in it, it caught my attention.  I looked it up on the internet and found that Bridgestone uses this proving ground to test its tires for hydroplaning, noise, vibration, and harshness.  About 130,000 tires are tested annually in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and China.  This is the location of the only such facility in North America.

We got gas in Fort Stockton and then five miles east of that pulled into our camp for the night.  It is Fort Stockton RV Park and was a former KOA.  How do I know that?  Well, it is located on KOA Road and it has the traditional A-frame office facility.  It was one o'clock and I went to the laundry.  What should have been a two-hour project turned into a three hours.  Four of the eight washers and dryers didn't work and I found another one that didn't work.  Unfortunately, I did not know that until I opened the top and found the water had not drained from the machine.  I had to take my clothes from that washer and put them in another to wash again.  Of course, they refunded me the cost of the load but it added more time to the completion of the job.  This is always a risk when you are using commercial machines.  Anyway, laundry is done and I am finally finishing my blog.  The wind has picked up around here.  We hope it will quiet down by tomorrow when we head east again.  The wind is blowing from the south so it will be pushing against the side of the motorhome.  It can be scary inside when a gust of wind outside slams into the side of the vehicle.

Tomorrow we hope to be 300 miles east of here and plan to stay there five nights and four days.  Looking forward to using the car for a while.


NOTE:  After I got home from this trip and was reading the journal entries, I discovered that when I wrote the posts concerning Fort Davis where I didn't have internet service,  I was actually in Big Bend and they were posted in an incorrect order.  This is the corrected order:

Monday, October 11:  Hello Texas, Again
Wednesday, October 15:  Fort Davis National Historic Site 
Thursday, October 16:  Heading for Big Bend National Park
Friday, October 17:  Driving on FB 170 in Texas