Same old, same old —hot, humid, and hazy. We had most of our preparation done last night, so it was a fast getaway at 9:00 this morning. We had 255 miles to go to get to Ft. Stockton today. We started out on highway 290 going west from the campground where traffic was non-existent.
We were climbing gradually into the hills, but the haze prevented us from getting a good view of anything.
The weatherman said that mush of the haze this week was due to the farmers burning off the sugar cane fields in Central America. There was only one town on this highway, but lots of big ranches. On the hillside, we saw something that put a smile on our faces.
Bob spotted these unusual African Kudus running in the fields of a wild animal preserve. That man has great eyesight!
The ranches in this area seem to be populated with goats and sheep mostly. (I did a little research and found out that the American goat population is heavily concentrated in the Southwest, Texas in particular. 80% of the goats are raised for meat and 16% for milk. 4% of the goats are Angora goats raised for their mohair.) We hopped on I-10 after 40 miles where the speed limit was 80 mph. We kept our speed to 60 mph.
The topography on I-10 changed and became more hilly and rocky with exposed limestone bluffs.
We stopped near Sonora, TX at a Rest Area that had these cool picnic shelters made to look like wagon wheels.
Fortunately, the hazy skies were keeping the temp down to around 83 degrees. The scenery was definitely getting more interesting the further west we went.
The highway wound itself up and down and through the bluffs.
We crossed the Pecos River and amazingly it had water in it. Many rivers we’ve passed were bone dry.
An area lined by buttes had wind generators standing at the top like candles.
Periodically, we’d see pumpjacks and oil derricks scattered across the land and these flaming tubes burning off the excess gas as a by-product of pumping oil or natural gas.
We arrived at Ft. Stockton RV Park at 2:00 for one night. It was an easy-on, easy-off from the highway.
We were assigned site #51, a pull-through site, so the Jeep could stay hooked up.
The haze had finally cleared off and the temperature rose to 94 degrees at the time we arrived. As the afternoon wore on, the temp rose to 108 with a humidity level of 5%. We sat in the AC until after dinner, when it had cooled off a little to take Auggie for his walk. On our walk, we came across some interesting Texas flora.
We waited for the sun to go down to see the sunset. It was worth the wait.
Tomorrow we leave for Big Bend National Park where we’ll spend the next 7 days. We may have limited Internet services there, but I’ll do the best I can.