Mark and Patty RV Adventures: Travel through Texas heading west

March 14 - 20, 2018:

We left our winter site at Natures Resort last Wednesday the 14th and we are now leaving Texas and are heading further west. So it has taken us a week to get out of Texas with our 200 miles of travel a day and a minimum stay of 2 nights.

We made 3 stops in Texas on our way out. We stopped in San Antonio (221 miles), Ozona (219 miles), and finally in Van Horn Texas (226 miles). Our first stop in San Antonio we used our one full day to explore the Shops at La Cantera. We have seen most of what we want to see in San Antonio so we decided to go here for lunch and some shopping. This is a large outdoor shopping mall located on the northwest side of the city. We were at the Braunig Lake RV Resort on the southeast side, of course! We had to traverse the city from one end to the other for a distance of 25 miles.

Entrance to the Braunig Lake RV Park

Our site in San Antonio

Cool cactus blooming during my morning walk

We had lunch at the Yard House with a couple of beers. Then we did some clothes shopping for Patty. She has lost weight and was in need of some shorts which we found at the H&M store.

The Yard House has many beers on tap!

That was it for our one day in San Antonio.

Our second stop was at the Economy RV Park in Ozona Texas 219 miles from our stop in San Antonio. Ozona is the definition of in the middle of nowhere! The closest “real” town with a hospital is San Angelo just over 80 miles away. That is where residents go to buy food and other essentials.

Our site in Ozona Texas

Downtown Ozona

We had dinner on our first night, Friday, at the Hitchin Post on the eastern side of town. We both had the fish fry dinner, it was Friday after all. The fish and fries were very good too! We had 2 beers which to get we had to pay our $5 for drinking privileges at the restaurant. The county is dry but you can consume alcohol at private clubs. To be a private club you need to have everyone pay $5 for 3 days that goes to the county. It really is hard to believe the citizens went for this but the beliefs of people around this country we have found are really different from place to place!

The Hitchin Post for dinner

Cowhide on the wall inside the hitching post

Ozona was originally an oil place and then it was known for wool and mohair manufacturing and now it is an oil and gas place. The town has a museum that we wanted to visit but it was closed even though the sign says it was to be open. A local we met told us that they never really know when it will be open.

The nice museum that wasn't open

We walked around the town on our one full day there. We visited an antiques shop where the owner was all too happy to bend our ears. He told us about the history of the town and his personal history. It was as good as the museum! One of the things of note here is that the town of Ozona is the only town in the entire county of Crockett (named after Davey)!

The antiques store where we talked to the owner about the area

Some yard art in Ozona

I didn't know what this was. So I went over to talk to the kids who were standing around it and asked them about their truck. It is for hunting! The damn thing even has LED lighting on the front!

The next day I spotted another one of these hunting trucks. Not sure this is legal!

Some very nice houses on the east side of Ozona. We were told that these houses were originally used to house mothers and their kids while they went to school here. This went on up to the 60s. School started in November and was out in March. This was so the kids could help on the ranches around here. Kids lived up to 100 miles from here!

That was it for Ozona Texas!

Our next and last stop in Texas was the Desert Willow RV Park in Van Horn Texas 226 miles from Ozona. Van Horn is just next to being in the middle of nowhere. Van Horn has many RV Parks and motels as well as many restaurants. It’s a very nice place to just stay the night. We couldn’t beat the nightly rate of $14! Would have been $13.50 but we used a credit card.

Our site in Van Horn Texas

A view of the mountains off in the distance from our site in Van Horn. It was only 15% humidity here with a 30 -40 mph wind. Yeah, there was dust!

There is the Clark Museum here that is open. Not a great museum but a very nice lady who runs it will spend as much time you as you can stand, ah, I mean want! And the best thing is it is free, but they do take donations. The museum is really a work in progress. It borders on someone’s collection of antiques from the area piled up in different rooms. It’s better than that but not far off either. Not sure about Patty but I enjoy that sort of thing, listening to locals talk about themselves and their part of the country. We managed to spend an hour there anyway.

The Clark Museum in downtown Vah Horn

This was behind the old bar. I had never seen one of these before.

Its an old draft beer dispenser.

A 1905 coal cooking stove.

This thing was a beast!

No one was sure why this was in the museum!

The museum was once a hotel. This was the front desk from around 1900. The railroad was and still is directly behind the museum. There once was a passenger station but that is now gone.

An old blacksmiths shop that was saved from the town.

This was a picture on the museum wall. The horns on this Texas longhorn were huge!

In town there is the old El Capitan Hotel. This is a great restored 1930s era adobe style hotel. They did an exceptional job of restoration on this place. If we ever come through in a car I would make it a point to stay here!

After going to the local grocery store and filling the truck up with fuel we called it a day.

The lobby of the old El Capitan hotel

A preserved coffee menu in the El Capitan

Water fountain in the El Capitan

Another view of the hotel. It seems strange that this nice hotel is really here!

That finished our one full day in Van Horn Texas.

On Tuesday the 20th and the first day of spring we headed off to our next stop in Deming New Mexico. This takes us out of Texas after a week of traveling from our winter spot in the Rio Grande Valley. The Texas Border is about 12 miles North West of El Paso Texas which is 140 miles from Van Horn. The total distance from our winter site in the RGV to the border of New Mexico is 804 miles. We traveled the 804 miles in 7 days, 4 days moving and 3 days exploring.