Junction – Big Bend: February 13th

Not a great morning, pipes froze overnight so it took a while for water to come through. Also, we have realized that over the last couple of weeks, we have adjusted to central time, unintentionally. We have kept our clocks on eastern time, trying to make it easier for Dave to get up for work, our plan is now to keep one hour ahead of everyone, we’ll change one hour when we get to mountain time. Anyway, point being, we haven’t been getting up until after 8am, so when the alarm clock woke us up earlier – and it being still pitch black outside - so we could get on the road, it was a shock, followed by the ‘no water’ and rather chilly outside temps – not a fantastic beginning to the day.

Regardless, we got going and as we drove out through the town of Junction (past the sign out of the campground: ‘Y’all Come Back’ – yep, we’re in Texas!), we had to turn around and get a photo of the ‘Deer Horn Tree’! We drove by and I thought it was a Christmas tree, but no, a tree made solely of deer horns – in front of the deer processing shop – awesome!

It is so pretty in this area, lots of mountains and still very green. The I10 goes through the middle of cut-through mountains, can’t imagine the work involved in doing that. We saw a lot of horse and cattle ranches (gorgeous houses with beautiful gateways), as well as fields of animals, the most interesting of note: a huge group of white sheep with black heads along with their lambs – also white with tiny black heads, adorable!). As we had left the campground, we thought we saw a dark gazelle in the field with deer; we are very much enjoying all the different wildlife.

We stopped for gas and food at Fort Stockton and I managed to get a photo of a typical Texan cowboy, complete with chewing tobacco, moustache, cowboy hat, wrangler shirt and jeans. I know, we’re such tourists but he seemed OK that I asked to take a photo, really laid on the English accent!

As we turned onto highway 385, all we could see in the distance was a long straight road, ending with a line of mountains: awesome! The sign stated: Big Bend – 126 miles! As we drove down, we passed field upon field of low to the ground shrubs and random border patrol guards. As I was chatting on the phone with Karen, cell phone service disappeared, gasp, horror, no texting for a week!

All we could do for the next couple of hours was gaze out of the car window at the incredible views in front of us. Big Bend National Park is certainly a sight to behold, it's beautiful.

The full hook-up campground only has space for about 25 RVs and is really a glorified car park but surrounded by fields filled with wildlife and of course, awe-inspiring views and mountains. We were watched by roadrunner birds as we set up - they prefer to run than fly and can reach speeds of up to 20mph. They get much of the fluid they need to survive from the animals they kill by pecking them to death. The kids learned this from the Junior Ranger books among other fascinating facts about wildlife in this desert landscape.