North Port Florida

Now in North Port, Florida

We are now in Del Rio Texas

We are now in Del Rio Texas

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.

A very cool rest stop on I 10 a few miles southeast of El Paso

Entering New Mexico after being in Texas for the past 5 months

Another nice rest stop on the New Mexico border

Our rig on the border of Texas and New Mexico

Our next post will most likely be when we reach our RV Dreams Rally stop in Pahrump Nevada next Monday the 26th of March.

Stay tuned!


Leaving our Winter Home and Heading West

March 14, 2018:  

We are leaving a couple months early this year.  We usually don’t leave Texas until the end of April or 1st of May.  This year we have a lot we want to do early in the season so we need the time.

These are a few various pictures from the 2017-18 winter season here in South Texas.


We dressed as gifts for a Christmas parade.


We are always amazed at the size of the vegetables here in south TX. The 2 on the right were ones we had from up north.

We took a short trip up to San Antonio to see the riverwalk lights at Christmas

Patty had eye surgery to implant a drain in her left eye.  It is permanent tube into her eye with a drain contraption on the outside of her eye under her lid.  This was taken just after the surgery.  It is to reduce the pressure in that eye and it has worked!

We decided to reupholster our RV chairs.  They were made with something like 1/4 inch foam that has depressed to nothing now.  It felt like sitting on a board.

These are the after before and after pictures.  We added 2 inches of foam.  A BIG difference to sit on!

It took about an hour and a half per chair and we had 5 chairs.  We did them over a 2 week period.

I shared a birthday with these ladies in January.  We had a great dinner celebration at the Texas Roadhouse. 


Another project was replacing our microwave/Convection oven.  This one has never gotten up to temperature.  It never got over about 300 degrees on the 425-degree setting.  It was also a bit small.

The old one out and ready for the new bigger one.

The new one on the floor ready to be lifted into place.

The finished project.  I needed the help of our neighbor Tony to lift this up to its position. We also added the utensil rack.

Lastly, we had a new awning installed a week ago.  The old one was starting to come apart as it was now 6 years old.  All of the work was done with just one guy.  You know this wasn't his first!


We are headed to Pahrump Nevada first to an RV Dreams Rally at the end of March.  The rally is about 1400 miles north and west of us here in south Texas.  Since we don’t drive a long distance every day (200 miles) and we stop for at least 2 nights, it will take us 2 weeks to get to the rally site.

This has been the coldest season here in south TX for us.  This was our 5th year here in the Rio Grande Valley.  We probably had more cold days here this year than warm days.  I’m not sure that is true but it has felt like it.  And when we say cold we mean anything below 70 really.  Real cold for us would be anything below 50 and we have had way too many of those days too!  In December we even had snow!  And the snow even stuck to the ground enough to build a small snowman.  It was said here that the snow was the first in 13 years.


Snow!


This year is promising to be a change year for us.  We are planning to purchase a house in the south of Tampa Florida area and downsize the RV.  We plan to purchase a house in May-June and then continue our usual travel into October.  At that time we will head back to Florida to downsize the RV.  We want to trade the truck for a large (Ford Expedition size) SUV and the 5th wheel for a travel trailer in the 8,000 lb size (around 28 feet).  

After the downsize, we plan to return to our place in south Texas for the remainder of the winter season.  We most likely will sell our place there in 2019.  Our future plan is to stay in Florida during the winter and travel shorter duration trips in the summer.  THAT CAN CHANGE!!  Anything is possible at this point!

That is it for today.  We are headed today to San Antonio for our first stop on our way north and west.

Stay Tuned!