Monday, 5 November. Left Santa Fe for Roswell and Carlsbad, NM,
at about 9am…oops, I mean 10am, once we factored in Daylight Savings Time
(DST). Got a later start than we’d hoped
for since we had almost 300 miles to cover today. We did manage to stop in Roswell to visit the
International UFO Museum & Research Center.
Did some early Christmas shopping at their gift store for the
grandkids…pretty neat stuff. Fairly laid-back
museum, with most of it a re-hash of the Roswell incident. Kinda
neat, though; lots of neat displays and old newspaper coverage from the
mid-1950’s. Finally arrived in Carlsbad
mid-afternoon; spent an overnighter in a very nice campground, Carlsbad RV
Park and Campground, on NM Hiway 180, just a mile or so off Hiway 285. Very clean, well-maintained, close to amenities.
Tuesday, 6 November. Left Carlsbad at about 8:30 and crossed into
the Great State of Texas…and realized we’d “lost” another travel hour since
we’d crossed into the Central Time Zone. And we already had another long day ahead of us, right at 330 miles to Junction, Texas. West Texas is as boring as we remember
it. Straight-as-an-arrow roads, whether it was on
285 (we took this sometimes two-lane, sometimes four-lane highway all the way
from Santa Fe to Ft Stockton, Texas….mainly pretty good road) or I-10, which we caught
at Ft Stockton. In this part of West
Texas, I-10 is pretty good interstate, but very straight. It’s also one of the most rural interstate
highways in Texas, with classic desert landscapes, large rock cuts that allow the interstate to continue to go straight ahead, the largest windmill farm in Texas, and loads of
oil drills dotting the landscape.
Another thing we noticed immediately upon entering I-10 at Ft. Stockton was
the speed limit: 80mph. We’d seen 75mph
out in South Dakota, but not 80mph. And
believe me, lots of cars were traveling I-10 well in excess of the speed
limit. I put the Winnebago’s cruise
control on 65 and we made quite nice time, thank you very much.
View of I-10 East, somewhere in West Texas
We arrived at our campground in Junction at the North Llano River RV Park, "where exceptional service meets genuine Texas hospitality" -- and I have to admit, the camp staff was indeed mighty friendly -- around 3:30pm. Very nice
campground right on the river (which was dry, BTW), on the smallish side, but it
came with Wi-Fi, cable, a well-stocked camp store, and large campsites, each
with its own patio. Like I said, pretty
nice campground for out in the middle of virtually nowhere. And Junction is pretty much that. Once set up, we headed
out for some dinner. Our camp hosts had
recommended a local BBQ place, Lums
Bar-B-Q that was supposed to be quite good. It scored 4.0 to 4.5 on a 5.0
scale on several websites. The folks at Lums mesquite-smoke all their
meats and we could smell the wonderful woodsy odors as we walked toward the
front door.
Brisket plate at Lums
I ordered the brisket plate and Lynette got the smoked turkey plate – and we were definitely not disappointed. The brisket was lean and so tender I could
pull it apart with my hands. It was very moist and had a nice but not
overwhelming smoke flavor. The smoked turkey was also good, but not quite as
moist. We each got the potato salad and
pinto beans as our sides. The servings
were quite ample, so we had plenty to bring back for our lunch stop tomorrow. If traveling in Texas via I-10, make Junction
a stopover and eat at Lums. Guarantee you’ll not be disappointed.
Wednesday, 7 November.
We left Junction around 9:00am and headed east on I-10 toward San
Antonio. I spent over 10 years in Texas
when I was in the Air Force, with 6 of them in the Alamo City. Over the years we both have agreed that San
Antonio is a great city and one of our favorites. Rather than driving thru San Antonio city
center via I-10, we opted to skirt the major part of the city by taking the
1604 Outer Loop. Last time we were here,
1604 was pretty much a rural loop road that circled San Antonio and its Inner
Loop, 410, with very little build-up, either residential or commercial. No
more. As we headed east and then south
to pick up I-10 to Houston on San Antonio’s southeastern side, we saw loads of
new development – commercial and residential.
Big surprise for us.
We finally found ourselves past San Antonio with only a 3-hr
drive to the Houston area ahead of us.
We were headed for Brazoria County, about 90-minutes southwest of Houston,
where my cousin Doug lives. Our
campground for the next few days will be the Quintana County Park,
near Freeport, which sits right on the Gulf of Mexico. We turned off I-10 just past Sealy and headed
south on Texas Hiway 36. Turned out to
be a decent road, two-lanes, but good road.
Went thru several small towns before driving over two high bridges to
reach Freeport and then Quintana a couple miles further. The county park sits at the end of the road,
so to speak, and as I mentioned, sits right on the Gulf.
After getting settled into our campsite (photo above), we decided to take
a quick walk on the beach before nightfall.
We managed about a 30 minute walk along the beach before watching the
sun set for the day. We’re one of a
handful of motorhomes/trailers in the campground, so we should have the run of
the campground pretty much to ourselves – at least until the weekend.
Plan to contact my cousin tomorrow morning to let him know that we’ve arrived safe-and-sound and then make arrangements to get together for a visit, probably on Saturday. Weather is supposed to be pretty nice: partly
sunny to partly cloudy each day, with highs in the mid-to-high 70’s – and no
rain in the forecast. Looking forward to
the visit with my cousin and also some quiet beach time. More later…..
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