Texas - part 2

Mexicans on their side of the border
in Big Bend National Park

The drive from San Antonio to Terlingua was a long one, mainly on Highway 90 towards Del Rio then following the Rio Grande west and hugging the Mexico border. From here we visited Big Bend National Park, which is a protected area of the Chihuahuan desert. Great scenery and views, as well as a Bobcat that ran across the road in front of us, and several Roadrunners too. Being so close the border with Mexico we were stopped on two occasions by the US Border Patrol, and despite it being obvious that we were not Mexicans they diligently checked that even as tourists we had the right to be on US soil. In some places like Boquillas Canyon, the river separating Mexico from the US is just a few feet wide, and a few enterprising Mexicans do cross over in the early hours to lay out handcrafted goods for sale with honesty boxes, and return to the Mexican side for the day to lay in the sun and have tourists take pictures of them.

Heavy frost on barbed wire
near Fort Davis

Next stop was a small town named Fort Davis, based around one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars frontier military post. Occupied from 1854 to 1891, it was strategically located to protect emigrants, mail coaches, and freight wagons on the Trans-Pecos portion of the San Antonio-El Paso Road and on the Chihuahua Trail. The weather turned very cold on us here, a cold front coming in dropping the overnight temperature to -11c, which created stunning frost but also an extremely cold night in an motel with a badly fitting door and a noisy heater.

A very big telescope at
McDonald Observatory

However cold it was, spending a full day at the Mcdonald Observatory made up for it all. Its actually part of the campus of University of Texas at Austin, and we did a tour of some of the telescopes, even getting to play with the buttons to move them around. During the day we did some observations of the sun which was very interesting and we stayed on to do an evening observation with them of the stars and planets too, though the weather was not kind to us with banks of fog rolling in due to the cold weather. However, it was a very interesting day, and we left with our brains overloaded with information and pondering the enormity of space.

Ever onward we headed to the border town of El Paso. Bordering Mexico we expected lots of character here, however it wasn't particularly historic or well looked after and we were a little disappointed. To top that off, we had planned an extra day here to go on the Wyler Ariel Tramway, but that was closed due to unexpected maintenance. We did however get this photo of El Paso from an elevated car park of an assisted living home nearby !

The view over El Paso, with Mexico in the distance on the far right 

We were happy to move on from El Paso, crossing the state line into New Mexico and passing through Roswell, which you might have heard of as the crash site of an alien spacecraft. We didn't see anything there of course, except snow that had started to settle at the roadside. As we drove northeast towards Amarillo the driving conditions got progressively worse, and having to overtake a gritting truck on a dual carraigeway at nearly 70 mph may be one of the most buttock clenching moments of the trip.

Cadillac Ranch, in the snow.

Crossing back into Texas, on the outskirts of Amarillo is Cadillac Ranch - a piece of public art where ten Cadillac's have been buried upright in a field. Its one of those roadside america things that you have to see, and being in the snow it was quite different too. Amarillo itself was a much nicer town - mainly because historic Route 66 passes through Amarillo on 6th Avenue. Being a snowy Sunday there was not too much going on but we did a detour to visit Palo Duro Canyon state park, known locally as the grand canyon of Texas. It looked stunning in the snow, and we saw Roadrunners, a Porcupine, a pair of Wild Turkeys and the park's resident mascot Texas Longhorn cattle named Brisket, Omelet and T-Bone.

Sel outside the house at SouthFork Ranch

Another long drive found us in Dallas, where we are now. We've been to South Fork Ranch, made famous in the TV series Dallas, and had a tour of the house and surrounding ranch grounds. With our own distant memories of JR it was good to see the place although we cant help but feel that its appeal as a tourist attraction is going to become progressively more limited as time goes by.

Sel at the bull riding ring at
Billy Bob's Honky Tonk.

We also visited Billy Bob's, which is the worlds largest Honky Tonk at nearby Fort Worth with a capacity for 6000 people. It's a mecca for cowboys, with several big bars, a restaurant, stage and dance floor, a pool table hall and a pro bull riding ring. Though very quiet when we visited on a weekday, we can just imagine the atmosphere and buzz on a Friday or Saturday night.

We've got a few more things to see in Dallas, not least the famous "Grassy Knoll", but then we'll be heading out of Texas. No Facebook album this time but we'll have an album for the next post which will include some more photos from this update.