Thursday, March 12, 2009

A cool days drive

Location, Alpine, TX

Alpine, Texas, home of Sul Ross State University. Never heard of it? Google it.

Alpine is also one of the jumping off places for Big Bend National Park if you want to go to the west side of the park. Most people go in from Marathon which is 31 miles east of here. It is still more than 100 miles to the Rio Grande from there. The sign says 69 miles to Big Bend from Marathon; however that only gets you to the entrance station. It is still another 30 plus miles to the visitor center then 20 some to the campground on the Rio Grande. I know, because we have done that.

We left again about 9:30 in very cool weather. Temps about 40 degrees. It never got above 43 degrees all day. Of course, we are climbing in altitude also. The altitude at Alpine is about 4400 feet so I expect we need to drain the water hose tonight before we go to bed.

Just west of Del Rio is the Amistad National Wildlife Area. Amistad is a very large lake which has the Rio Grande and Pecos rivers flowing into it. Part of the lake is in Mexico. It is something like 85 miles long.

We pulled into a rest stop at the Pecos river which had a very nice overlook in to the river canyon and the highway bridge over the river. It was too cold to stay long. The scenery was much like yesterday but at times we had a great view from the top of ridges.


We arrived about 3:30 and finally found the RV Park after driving into town and then backtracking. We were looking for KC’s RV park which is listed in the Trailer Life book but has since been named DB’s RV Park. For $14 per night we get water, electric, and sewer but no cable.

A quick drive around town and we saw 3 other RV parks which may be nicer but also cost a lot more. I suspect that providing cable TV is one of the big cost factors. We fueled up and will be ready to go tomorrow.