We got up at 7:30 and were ready to hit the road by 9:00. It took us 45 minutes to drive 40 miles through San Antonio. With a population of 2.5 million people, the city is growing by leaps and bounds, spreading out to the north. We passed the Alamodome–home to the San Antonio Spurs.
Once we got out of town, instead of seeing flat grasslands like we expected, we encountered rolling hills, rocky cliffs, and beautiful vistas.
We stopped for gas in Junction, paying $2.50 a gallon with our Good Sam’s discount of 5 cents a gallon. Traffic was light and we started to see a few more RVs on the move. (I counted 22 today). The speed limit was 80 on I-10, but we usually travel at 60 mph.
Bob said this was the best drive he’s had pulling the RV in a long time–nice roads, no traffic. We hadn’t seen any cattle at all, except for 3 that were being transported by truck and then we finally saw some grazing sheep and herds of goats. Everything looked very dry and according to today’s weather report, the area hadn’t had any rain in September at all. The creeks and streams were dry. Not much seems to grow here–some peanuts, pecans, sorghum, and cotton. The scenery is pretty dull with some big ranches sprinkled in now and then, but it was pretty desolate for the most part. We traveled on secondary highways from Junction to Big Spring, TX and there was very little traffic at all. As we got closer to Big Spring, we saw wind turbines dot the landscape.
Oil derricks could be seen pumping away in the fields. Now that seems more like Texas to me.
The terrain flattened out and greened up as we neared Big Spring. We arrived at our campground, West Texas Friendly RV Park and took site #28 at around 3:00.
It was the last available site. The park is inhabited by people who are working on oil rigs, windmills, and the railroad. The manager told us that some people are going on being here for 5 years now.
We set up and settled in after driving 305 miles today in 6 hours. Jerry, our next door neighbor, is also the park manager, so he helped us get set up. He is originally from Kalispell, MT near Glacier National Park. What a small world it is! Bob got the satellite hooked up and we were able to watch Wisconsin play BYU on TV. We ate a nice dinner of Jambalaya that Bob made, one of his many specialties, and then relaxed for the evening. We stayed connected so the we would have a quick and easy departure. Tomorrow we would have a shorter drive of 193 miles to Clovis, NM for the night and then on to Albuquerque for a few nights on Monday.