Jan 14
Our month long sentence was over today and we were sprung from the joint eagerly in the morning. It probably isn't fair to judge south Texas poorly as the weather was unusually bad for the winter, but we're taking the "been there, done that" attitude and likely will not be back.

Sam called for a reservation at a place that was within striking distance for the day and we headed there. It sounded good with concrete pads, full hookups etc. The owner told her she would not be there by our arrival time but she would leave the gate unlocked. We pull in at 4:30 to find big open field with fence and no one there. It could have been a movie set for one of those Armageddon flicks, it was that bad. The only concrete I saw was holding up the gate posts. It was completely enclosed by a high fence with no visibility from the road, weeds everywhere and abandoned shacks in various states of disrepair. It had that "Race With the Devil" kind of vibe and was well suited as a place where people could disappear never to be heard from again so we decided to move on.

With it getting dark we sourced out the local Walmart resort in the town of Uvald and had a good night there.

Jan 15-16

One fo the things we wanted to do this year was visit some places we passed by on our trip out here last year. So we headed to Fort Stockton for a couple of days. The name of the place conjured up visions of a western plains fort of the cowboys and Indians era (I know, Indians is politically incorrect, but that's what indigenous people were called back then).

Anyway, we pulled into the gravel parking lot on top of the hill, loosely described as an RV resort on the internet, and got the last spot! Wow, what a stroke of luck. It only had 30 amp service but they were calling for, wait for it, below freezing temperatures over the next couple of days. With 3 electric heaters and our water heater, we again had to play Green Acres electrical plug swapping so we didn't trip the main breaker.

As for the town, there's nothing there! A few old buildings that were the fort (I thought a fort had walls around it for protection) out in the middle of a field. We went to the tourist info building housed in the train station, and asked about the local attractions. I felt sorry for the lady there as she really had nothing to offer. Aside from the fort, which we had seen, the town boasts the largest roadrunner statue in the world, Pecos Pete. There was a museum but it looked closed and I couldn't get a volunteer to leave the comfort of their heated truck seat to go and try the door to see if it was locked. The town was pretty run down and looked like it was mainly in existence to support the oil field industry.

There was a nice park that had a large swimming pool that was fed by the Apache Spring, the water source that first attracted settlers here in the 1800's. aside from that we etertained ourselves with a trip to Walmart and the local Tractor Supply Company store.

It got very cold overnight and the truck was not liking startup in the morning. Normally it fires right up being a diesel, but with the cold temps. It cranked over quite a few times before firing up.

We stayed for 2 days as our reservation in Marathon didn't start until the 17th. Got a lot of TV watching and reading accomplished however.