January 10 through 17, 2022
Written January 20th – Still facing challenges with blog set-up, internet availability and weather, but working on getting caught up!
On Sunday, Jan 9, we broke camp at Big Bend Ranch State Park and drove back to Terlingua. Janine’s back was still pretty sore, but the truck seat heaters were helping! Weather was getting back to cold/cloudy/wet for the foreseeable future, so we made the decision to move on (continuing to head east and south) rather than spending some time exploring in Big Bend National Park proper. We had stayed at Big Bend Ranch State Park, rather than the more-popular National Park because we found that while it was easy to get camping spots in the state park, it can be quite challenging in the National Park!
With a vehicle, at Big Bend National Park, you basically have a choice between an RV park, with all services, in Rio Grande Village (think Camp Curry in Yosemite for comparision) on the east side of the (HUGE) park, or ‘primitive’ camping (basically you get a spot, maybe a picnic table and a pit toilet) down a variety of dirt roads scattered throughout the park, not really recommended for RVs. Much of the camping seems to be ‘hike in’ from your car or backpacking options, which is cool, but not good for us. Luckily Big Bend Ranch State Park was just about perfect, even if a little chilly! Anyway, we broke camp pretty quickly under grey skies and headed back to Terlingua for another night at BJ’s RV Park, not the greatest but convenient and we were really looking forward to the convenience of having unlimited electricity! We have solar panels that are good for lights and charging phones, but not enough for microwave oven, electric heater and the like.
So there’s a reason why we are on “the 70 degree tour” (seeking average highs in the 70’s for the winter). When we are camping “off-grid” and it gets cold, we basically have two challenges. Our propane heater built into the trailer really works, but it burns through our propane supply pretty fast, so we try to avoid using it unless it is REALLY COLD (like when we arrive somewhere after a day of driving in the cold). We have a small “Mr Buddy” indoor-safe propane heater (very handy!) to ‘take the edge off’ the heat, and we use that to warm up in the mornings.
Then there is the issue of our sleeping arrangements. We chose our ‘hybrid’ travel trailer because we loved the idea of the convenience of towing a smaller trailer and then folding out the beds on the end when we arrive, as well as the feeling of being more ‘out in nature’ with canvas ‘bedroom walls’ like in a pop-up trailer. However that virture is alot less of a blessing, when it is below about 45 or 50 degrees as it gets COLD! Not only in the ‘bedroom’ but it is alot harder to keep the whole trailer warm.
When we are at an RV Park (or any campground with electricity), we can use our portable electric heater (saving propane) AND we can use the super-cool (super-WARM!!?) electric mattress heaters at night. We’re finding that we can stay comfortable with electricity when the night-time temps drop down into the mid- to high 30’s, expanding our range a LOT! Since most of the weather we’ve encountered has featured lows in the low 40’s we’ve been seeking electricity alot. Generally we’d rather be “Boondocking” out in nature than crammed into an RV park, but when the weather doesn’t cooperate, you find other options. Luckily, we’ve found the Texas State Parks offer pretty good options, so we’ve mostly been moving from State Park to State Park and will continue that until it warms up some!
Heading to Seminole Canyon State Park
After an uneventful (and cold!) night in Terlingua, we again broke camp on Tuesday morning and headed on toward better weather and getting closer to the ‘official start’ of our 70 degree route, on the Gulf of Mexico at the border between Texas and Mexico. The day’s route started with a long drive on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive through Big Ben National Park, with a brief stop at the awesome roadside Fossil Discovery Site on the Main Park Road. Janine noticed right away, trying to walk like a cripple, that the driving was NOT helping her back!
Then we continued on toward the little town of Marathon, where we made a brief stop around lunchtime for Janine to try to find a Notary Public to sign some documents regarding Dad’s estate. We were surprised, but probably shouldn’t have been, to see that the bank (with Notary) had closed at 11am! That meant holding off on the Notary business until Del Rio, in about 5 days. Marathon was VERY SMALL but surprisingly up-scale, so we took the opportunity to walk around some and stretch our legs before soldiering on to Seminole Canyon, a State Park recommended particularly for their guided Petroglyph Tours, by our friends Armen and John, from their Southwest Tour in spring of 2020 . The drive through the high desert terrain was pretty uneventful and interrupted only by a couple of towns so tiny that HeeHaw would have approved!
Check-in at Seminole Canyon was quick and easy, and we got info on signing up for the Petroglyph Tours. We booked for 4 days, forecast to be sunny but cool, and looked forward to hiking and biking their 7 or so miles of trails as well as the aforementioned guided tour! Our only disappointment with the excellent facilities was that the water heater in the bathroom was apparently broken, so no hot showers!
Wednesday dawned a grey morning. After it warmed up a bit, Janine and Mike walked around the whole campground to check it out. Janine’s back continued to be a challenge, so she spent some time doing yoga, then hopped onto road bike for easy half-hour spin, hoping to loosen up the tightness, which helped. In the afternoon Janine and Mike walked the Birdwatching trail (maybe half a mile) which seemed to undo all the progress from yoga and biking! It was a quiet day and early night. Janine was having problems sleeping as any position lying down was painful. Frustrating!
Thursday morning was sunny, and maybe a little warmer. So in mid-morning we braved the cold and saddled up on the mountain bikes to try out the roughly 3.5 miles of public trails at Seminole Canyon. We’ve noticed that almost all trails in Texas State Parks are open to bikes and hikers, which is nice. And most of them definitely have their technical moments, so there is challenge! We started by rolling down on pavement to the Park HQ to purchase our tickets for the afternoon Petroglyph Tour. We did all the trails, most of them in both directions, in about an hour. A lot of the trails were basic double-track, but their Rim Trail felt like being back in Bidwell Park – it was limestone but so similar to the Upper Park lava cap!
We had time for a leisurely lunch before heading back down to the Park HQ for the tour. We only knew about the Petroglyph tour from our friends Armen and John, they passed through in spring of 2020 (yeah, as COVID took hold, what a time to be on the road!) and wrote about it in their great blog. At that time, the campground was closed but they did the tour and highly recommended it. And it did not disappoint! Our Park Ranger guide was very knowledgable and easy-going. There were about 10 of us on the tour, with a wide range of abilities. We started with a 250ft descent from HQ down to the ‘caves’, really just big overhangs where one could get some protection from the elements, and she told us a bit about the early residents here, their habits and the efforts of archeologists to both understand them better AND to preserve what remains of their amazing artwork (as well as some horror stories of past archeologists’ activities… like putting kerosene on the petroglyphs to bring the colors out!!! That led to their complete disappearance in some areas…). After the tour, we had a good workout going back up the steps, which went OK, but later Janine’s back rebelled entirely and we made a plan to find a chiropractor at our next stop. She ended up getting out of bed and sleeping (or attempting to!) on the floor halfway through the night, it was so bad.
Friday, Jan 14: Seminole Canyon State Park to Del Rio – Chores and Back Relief!
We would have liked to stay longer and explored the local road bike riding, but it was just a bit too cold (and windy…!). So we packed up and continued on our journey to the south-east, getting ever closer to the ‘official’ start of our 70 Degree Tour . The drive was relatively short (about 2 hours) and uneventful with more of the usual greys and browns as we left “The Big Bend Country” and moved deeper into the “South Texas Plains” – we’re getting a crash course in all things ‘Texican’, from geology to history to tex-mex food! We found a nice, basic RV park on the outskirts of Del Rio, a quiet town of 35,000 people, where we hoped to get caught up on chores and business including a chiropractor appointment for Janine, several loads of laundry, and finally finding a Notary Public where we could get some emailed documents printed, signed, notarized and returned.
We managed to accomplish all the above on Friday afternoon, using the excellent laundry facilities at our camp, a UPS store for notary, printing etc, and Dr Don James at Del Rio Chiropractic , who gave Janine 75% relief instantly!!! That was HUGE! On his advice, we decided to stay an additional day in Del Rio for Janine’s back to continue to mend without the strain of additional driving. We also had our first experience of a southeastern US chain: the Dirt Cheap store chain.
If you ever scratched your head at the things you might find at a store like Big Lots, you’d find Dirt Cheap fascinating. It has got to be the end of the road for similar types of previously unsold items – from expired “Best By” dated food to last season’s clothing to just about anything you can think of! Racks and stacks and bins and piles of stuff with only the slightest sense of any organizing principle. That kept us entertained for an hour or two, and Janine found a $60 down jacket from Target with the tags still on, for $10! Since the weather hasn’t been exactly hovering at 70 degrees, it is sure to come in handy. The one mystery of Del Rio we could not figure out was the crazy layout of the roads. It seemed that you could not get to anywhere from anywhere in a straight line, so we spent a lot of drive time scratching our heads, and driving in circles! We finished up the day with the novelty of watching TV and (at last, for Janine) a restful sleep. Not 100% pain-free but SO much better!
Our only disappointment was learning that the RV Park did not yet have a bathroom/shower facility – apparently it was originally a mobile home park, and it hadn’t been built yet. Our trailer has a shower of course, but it uses alot of our water, fills our grey tank (which we then have to empty) and it is the perfect (only?) place to keep the cats’ litter box. So we don’t use it often! The trailer also has an outdoor shower, which is great when it’s warm, and when we’re in a more remote/private setting… but not so good when the high is 60 and you’re in a very public place!
Saturday, Jan 15: Del Rio Lazy Day!
We slept in a bit, but were brought back to reality by the noisy flapping beginnings of an incredibly windy day. The weather alert predicted gusts upwards of 50MPH! We were thanking our lucky stars that we weren’t driving in it, but also bummed because we had planned a bike ride for the day but it was ridiculously too windy to even consider. Janine’s back was better but not enough to do much walking, so we did some lazing around, some cleaning and maintenance, grocery shopping and took a fun trip to Julio’s Mexican Restaurant and Tortilla Chip Factory (Sherian Lee, Janine was thinking of YOU!!) for an early Birthday Dnner for Mike. When we got there, it was take-out only, so we “made lemonade” by enjoying some western movies on GRIT channel (double feature James Garner, Support your Local Sherrif and Support your Local Gunfighter), Mike’s favorite!
Sunday, January 16: Del Rio to Lake Casa Blanca INTERNATIONAL State Park, Officially on the 70 Degree Route and Happy Birthday Mike!
We had a nice short and uneventful drive to Lake Casa Blanca, a State Park that was really more like a City or County Park right in Laredo TX, where we joined up with the 70 Degree Route . The January portion of the route starts on the Gulf of Mexico at the Mexico/Texas border, and follows the Rio Grande upstream, north and west to end up in Laredo on the last day of January. So we were a little early in arriving as we were approaching from the west and didn’t anticipate that we’d need to see/experience the entire route.
In fact, it wasn’t exactly a glorious introduction to ‘our route’! A city of 250,000, Laredo offered us plenty of navigational challenge, and really just the worst bike riding options anywhere we can remember being. The actual campground was nice enough, but the only entrance was an exit from an expressway loop around the city with three lanes of traffic in each direction. On the other side of the highway was the Laredo International Airport! Guessing they have a flight or two into Mexico… Anyway we did have great weather! We arrived, set up and took the road bikes out for a somewhat abortive bike ride within the limited confines of the smallish park, then headed to the bathroom facility for much-appreciated showers… Though Mike found the water temperature to be a bit too ‘lukewarm’! He WAS able to tune in to the next round of Superbowl Playoff games, so that (and his new favorite, birthday Triple Leche Cake) made his 69th birthday (and first ‘on the road’!) at least somewhat memorable.