Day 21 Saturday 23rd April 2011
We left the hotel and rode down to the Alamo again to take some more photos but when we got there a market complete with tents obscured the Alamo frontage so we gave up and headed out of the city on the US90.
The journey started across the Texas prairie, a long hot road with not much to see but fuel stops brought much interaction with the locals who were really interested in the trip and completely overawed with the scale of the undertaking.
A cute girl with her son talked to us for a while at one fuel stop until her dad (we presume) stuck his head out of the fuel station door and called her away – I think he must have thought that we were trying to chat her up but he was mistaken we were simply passing the time of day with her.
The further west we went the more arid and hilly the surrounding area became and we were soon crossing the Rio Grande at Del Rio and noticing the huge army of Border Patrols that remind you that you are only a stone’s throw from the Mexican border. We were stopped at one point and our passports checked but our visa stamps did the trick and we were left to carry on our journey westwards.
By the time we reached Sanderson we were in semi desert, cactus country and most certainly cowboy land. Route 271 to Fort Stockton was blocked by police and we presumed that it had something to do with the wildfires raging through over a million square acres of Texas at the moment. Our detour took us to Marathon where, on the outskirts of town, we took the US385 taking directly into Stockton but over 50 additional miles.
We checked in at the motel and walked a few hundred yards to K-Bobs Steakhouse where we finally got to have a normal meal. The waitress told us that the 271 was closed, not for wildfires, but for road racing – apparently once a year the road is shut and a 50 mile race is held along its length – we obviously chose the wrong day. Over the meal we talked about the journey and both agreed that the most enjoyable part of the trip is interaction with other people along the way and the little chats we have with them.
A bit of excitement was had on the walk back to the hotel. Distant sirens got closer and a police car zoomed past bus and pulled into the lot of the factory one block away from us and opposite our hotel entrance. When we looked closer we could see smoke billowing from the air vents bin the factory roof – the place was on fire !
The excitement was short lived though as it was only a minor fire and it was soon extinguished so no You Tube video of an exploding factory.
Back at the motel we made good use of our internet connection and booked, not Roswell, but a cheap motel in Alamogordo – yep, I’ve never heard of it either so I will let you know tomorrow.
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