Still in Texas - Ok! It's Big!

After leaving Monahans Sandhills SP, we drive southwest to Balmorhea State Park.  It's about an hour drive.  We can see the Davis Mountains in the distance, tiny specks at first, but then looming larger with every mile ticked off.  Their peaks are quite jagged and the mountains are brown and dry.  We will likely visit the Davis Mountain State Park during the return part of our journey to Texas after we've been through Arizona and California after Christmas.

So we arrive at Balmorhea.  It is an oasis in this desert.  In the state park, there is a 3.5 million gallon pool which is man-made, but naturally spring fed, and there are so many springs feeding into it that it takes only four hours to fill the pool, most of which is 20 to 25 feet deep!  The water is as clear as the purest Brita water.  Because this is off-season, there are only about four other couples here, one of which is scuba diving or learning how to.  Brad and I have our snorkel gear, and we head to the pool.  There are tons of small fish near the back of the pool where the springs are, some larger catfish and we also see one big turtle.  The clarity of the water allows us to easily see all the way to the bottom which is natural stones and plants, not tiles like you'd expect in a pool.  The water temperature is a constant 72 to 76 degrees F, but we are wearing wetsuits anyway, just so we can stay in the water longer.  And the water does feel very warm; in fact when we come out of the pool it feels cool because of the dry air and breeze.  But the sun is hot and we heat up quickly when we come out of the pool.

Brad snorkeling in the pool at Balmorhea State Park

Balmorhea is a beautiful place to spend the afternoon, but we head out late in the day to make our way to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park north of Pecos.  We camp in the National Park because there are so many hiking trails that it doesn't make sense to drive back and forth for an hour every day from the nearest town.  There are no hookups in the park campground, so we make sure to fill with propane, water and gas for the generator.  Because of the higher elevation (the highest peak is almost at 9,000 feet and the campground is at 5,700 feet), it's very cold - about 0 degrees C or 32 degrees F at night and only about 65 degrees F or 20 C during the day.  Because the range is so high, clouds actually form above it as the warm desert air rushes up the one side, so clouds are common over the mountains and on the one side of the valley.

We hike the McKittrick Canyon trail, which has some red, gold and orange trees visible from the trail, but nothing like the colours we get in Ontario (especially in the Muskokas) where an entire hillside will be blazing with colour.  Here there will be a clump of up to a dozen trees; and this is what Texans call spectacular fall colour.  I guess in a landscape of brown, dry grasslands, these hints of fall colour can be spectacular.  We also learn that the Guadalupe Mountains are geologically significant because they contain the most extensive exposure of the world's largest fossil reef.  There are three geological markers right here in the park and it is rare to find three such markers in one place.  Yet this national park is the sixth least visited park in the US.  The other five least visited are all in Alaska.  At least we won't be elbow to elbow with other hikers here, except that we happen to be visiting on a weekend and the trail is a bit busy with fellow hikers.

Brad and Marilyn in McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountain National Park

We also drive out to the Salt Basin Dunes which are like sand dunes but they are actually made up of gypsum (the material that makes up drywall or sheetrock).  This is a one hour drive from the park campground partly on a dirt road, then a one mile hike.  The dunes rise out of the desert scrub to a maximum height of 60 feet.  There are all kinds of animal tracks in the sand - coyote, lizards, rabbits, and I believe a deer; however we see absolutely no signs of life at all.  What makes the dunes so beautiful too is that the Guadalupe Peak is the backdrop, and today there are some clouds to animate the deep blue sky as well. 

Salt Basin Dunes of Guadalupe Mountains National Park

The wind picks up late in the afternoon and by the time we get back to the campground, it's gusting pretty good.  We're in for another cold night; thank goodness for the propane furnace.

Texas - it's not as big as Ontario!

We are driving straight across Texas, from Texarkana to Abilene first (where we spend a night at the Flying J truck stop) and then on to Monahans Sandhills State Park east of Pecos where we only expect to spend a couple of hours, but instead camp for two nights.  It's really beautiful here.  First, the drive from Abilene to the State Park is very windy, so much so that there are little tumbleweeds tumbling across I-20, and hundreds of windmills in the flat, desolate plains surrounding the interstate.  There are also cotton fields, about half of which have been harvested, and the other half are bursting with their white balls of fluff, ready to be picked.  And then there are the oil drilling rigs - hundreds and hundreds of them.  Somewhere along the way not far west of Abilene, these replace the windmills.  In Midland, a sign boasts that this city is the Hometown of George and Laura Bush.  We also drove through Hope, Arkansas which is the birthplace of Bill Clinton a few days ago.  Looks like we're in President Alley!

We love to chat with the "locals" to learn more about the places we visit and the people.  At breakfast in Abilene, we chat with our server, a 19-year-old young man named Zach who has lived in Texas all his life, and has left the state only once to go to Colorado for a high school band trip.  I guess Brad and I are fairly adventurous travellers:  I have been in 31 of the 50 United States; Brad has been in 28 (I only exceed him because of a couple of business trips).  We find that many Americans rarely leave their home state unless they move to take another job.  We have also travelled across Canada east and west, so are we unusual?  Send your thoughts and comments on that.

Monahans Sandhills State Park is a pretty interesting place.  There are "living" dunes and others that are "stable" (they don't call them dead dunes).  Living dunes are still forming with moving sand, like the Sahara.  Obviously, these dunes aren't that big.  The non-living dunes have scrub growing on them and are stable - they no longer move with swirling sand.  It is hot, sunny and windy here.  The ranger says the wind only stops when it gets to about 100 degrees!  We rent a plastic disc for dune surfing, but this proves to be less fun than you'd think because we can't get any speed going down the dunes as the sand is too soft and we sink too far down.  It's more work than fun since you have to walk back up - there's no tow rope like on a ski hill.  The sand is cold only a few inches below the surface, and moist. 

Brad sandsurfing at Monahans Sandhills State Park

Back at the trailer, small house finches are driving the cat nuts!  They are lined up to get at any drop of water coming from our hookup.  They are even landing on our open windows, which open from the bottom angled out, so Grady is running from window to window trying to sneak up on the birds.  He doesn't chatter at them like other cats do; he just watches them and only once or twice lunged at one.  During our second night in this park, we are the only campers.  There are only about 30 sites here, but it's an eerie feeling to be so alone.  Of course, there is a park ranger, so we are safe.

Grady birdwatching

On the morning that we leave Sandhills SP, Brad is exploring around in a small wooded area at the top of a dune and finds a small plastic container.  In it is a note that it is a "letterbox" started on March 13, 2010, and there are five other entries from others who have found it since.  Each person has their own stamp, but the note says that if you find the letterbox by accident, you can go on their website to check it out.  I think I will - www.atlasquest.com.  I make an entry even though we don't have a stamp (they can always rip out the page if we've made a faux pas) with our name, city and date found.  I guess this is a similar endeavour to geocaching.

Grady is much more comfortable in the truck now.  He is learning to "live" in it - he sleeps, eats and even uses the litter box while we are moving.  He no longer hides out in the "cat cave" under the back seat all the time.  He'll sit or lay on the console in between Brad and me, or sit on top of his carrier on the back seat and look out the window, or even sit on top of the back of the back seats.  He's become much more bold.  And when we get to Monahans Sandhills State Park, I get brave and put his leash on and let him walk in the big sand dunes where we are camped - and he loves it!  There is no one else around and nowhere for him to hide, otherwise I would never let him do this as he's not leash trained.  But he is very good and doesn't pull or try to get away.

Grady out on the dunes

We also finally buy an iPod Nano at Walmart, so we can download our music from my laptop and have more than just our CDs to listen to in the truck.  We have finally caught up with the new millennium!  In about an hour I get everything figured out with our 2008 and 2009 top 250 songs downloaded.  It's a very cool little device.  How did we live without all of these gadgets before?