McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, and Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Alpine, TX

28 Feb, Saturday: Another day for the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, TX. I put a pork roast and potatoes in the crock pot for dinner and we took off. First stop was at the Museum of Big Bend at the Sul Ross State University. We attended more sessions of cowboy songs and poetry all afternoon with a break around 2:00 to 3:00 for a trip to the trailer to see how the roast was doing. It was done so we ate and went back for one more session. This was a really fun thing to do if you like cowboy songs and cowboy stuff. Tomorrow we move to Kerrville to spend a little time with fellow RV-Dreamers.

27 Feb, Friday: Reason for coming back to Alpine for a few days was to attend the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Opening session was held in the university auditorium at 10:00 a.m. Then there was a tribute to Marty Robbins performed by these two--Washtub Jerry and Jeff Gore. They were pretty good.

Then it was off to attend one of the many sessions of cowboy songs and poetry held at other locations on the campus. We attended a couple of the session and then made our way back to the trailer. Fun day!

26 Feb, Thursday: Several of the RV-Dreamers had recommended we visit the McDonald Observatory so that was on the agenda for today. This sign is at the top of the mountain where the observatory is. It was really beautiful up here but very windy today....our tour guide couldn' open the doors to the domes because of winds gusting.
This was taken from the road into the visitor centers.

This is up the hill to tour the telescopes.

This is the visitors center from the road that takes you to the telescopes.This is a picture of a controlled burn that was taking place at the Davis Mountain State Park. You could see forever up on top of the mountain by the telescopes!!!This is the building that houses the 107 inch telescope....the one the tour took us inside to see.

You can't really tell what this is because it's so big but this is inside the building that houses the telescope and a picture of the telescope. Was too close to get the whole thing in one picture!
The is the Hobby Eberle Telescope. One of the biggest in the world. We also went inside this building to see the telescope. A very good informative tour.

This is the historice site of Fort Davis....we decided it was too windy to pay the admission fee and walk around to all the buildings; but, we did drive close enough to see them from the truck.

Back at the trailer Nolan grilled some chicken and potatoes and I caught up on the blog!

Catch Up--Long Entry

25 Feb, Wednesday: Moving day and as usual, we were on the road around 9:30. Very uneventful drive and kind of boring since this was our third trip on this road....once to check the place out, once down to Big Bend for our stay and now on our way up to Alpine, TX. We had checked out the Lost Alaskan RV Park in Alpine on our trip last week and at that time they had tons of empty sites so we didn't make a reservation. Almost a big mistake. Guess lots of people come into town for the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering which is 27 Feb - 1 Mar. This is one time it was a good thing we left so early in the morning. I don't think if we had arrived in the afternoon that they would have had a site for us. Nolan backed into a pretty good site. There's plenty of room and a row of pine trees behind the trailers. I'll get around to taking some pictures and post at a later date. After Nolan got us parked, I started cleaning......wow there was a lot of dust!!!! We decided to just hang around and rest. Sure glad they had room for us!

24 Feb, Tuesday: We had basically seen everything that we knew to go visit and I think we both were kind of tired of the long drive into Big Bend National Park every day. So, today we just hung out at the trailer, except for walking up to the restaurant at the park and having a banana split....mmmmm it was good!!! I gave the dogs baths after our last outing and washed clothes all day. Life is rough!

23 Feb, Monday: Today was a big outing day.....lots of pictures. This was probably my favorite place in the park that we visited. We started our drive to Santa Elena Canyon, a 30 mile drive with lots of places to stop on the way or on the trip back. One of the stops was a the Sam Nail Ranch. Nolan tried to walk through the brush/cactus to the creek....he finally made it there and there was no water.....I didn't even attempt to get through the brush!
This is the remains of the ranch house. This is one of two wind mills on the ranch and this one is still working.
There was another ranch that was the Homer Wilson Ranch....I think they said this was a replica of the bunk house or something like that. It was kind of in a valley. Very pretty if the desert can be pretty. This is a close up of the building in the picture above.
This is just a cool picture I thought.
Then we got to where the canyone was!This is a picture of the canyon from an overloook on the way there. See the gap in the middle of the picture behind that flat mountain..... This is a close up from the same overlook.This picture was on the road a little closer.This is the canyon from the parking area.This is the canyon from the river access up the road a little.Nolan looking up river at the canyon from a sand bar. There is a path up the side of the mountain on the right that we went up. Nolan went all the way and I went almost all the way.This is the path.This was taken from the mountain path at the side of the canyon.This was also taken from the path on the mountain.....see the canoe?This is a close up of the canoe.Wow.....that was a great drive!!!

We had decided that we would go back to Terlingua Ghost Town to eat at the Starlight Theater. Nolan had talked to our neighbors who have been coming to Terlingua for over 10 years and they had said it was pretty good....especially on Monday when they have two hamburgers for the price of one. So off we went. Parking lot was busy and inside was almost full. For some reason Nolan decided to order tacos but I still ordered the hamburger. When we finally got our order.....a very long wait.....there was plenty of food but it was cold....not a great experience, but probably at times a great place to eat. Certainly was a different kind of place.

22 Feb, Sunday: We thought today would be a good day to go check out the Ghost Town......what ghost town.....there are some adobe ruins on a hill, the gift shop by the Starlight Theater restaurant that doesn't open until 5:00 p.m. We were there in the middle of the day and started looking for some place besides the restaurant where we were staying to eat. We didn't find anything around that looked open or some place we might like to try. So, we drove down the road to the town of Lajitas that looked a little more prosperous but couldn't find anything there either.....so, it was back to the trailer for sandwiches.

Later in the afternoon, Nolan decided we would walk the dogs back to the golf course and I got a few pictures of our trailer on the way there. Our trailer is the second one on the left side of the road.

This is looking back at the trailer park from the golf course.....nothing but lots of dirt and dust! Road we walked down to the golf course....the golf course is actually on the right and left of the road.This is one of the greens.....not the prettiest golf course I've ever seen!Back at the trailer we just watched TV and knitted (me not Nolan).

21 Feb, Saturday: We had watched the weather and they had said lots of wind today....boy were they not kidding!!!! This is a picture of the landscape on our drive to Rio Grande Village in the Park. Picture is not blurry.....that's dust in the air!!!This was not a good day for an outing and we sure didn't stay very long....we drove through both the full hook up and no hook up RV parks and then down to the river.....Nolan drove there at a river access area.....I didn't get out....it was too windy. We couldn't hardly even stand up! All the wind didn't put Nolan in a very good mood....back to the trailer to watch TV and knit!!!!

20 Feb, Friday: Hiking was on the agenda for today....I was kind of excited! We hadn't decided exactly how long of a hike we thought I good do so we started out on the small one that has great views of the "Window".

The "Window".That was a very short walk so we took off on the Lower Basin Loop which led to another path that led to the South Rim which later we found out was 6 miles......Nolan thinks we probably walked about 1.5 miles down or I should say up that hike. It was really going up a lot and I ran out of energy so we started back down and went the rest of the way around the loop for a total of around 3 miles.....I was pretty proud of myself. We picked an excellent day, not too hot!

This is one of the park resident houses on the mountain that we could see from the path.This is Nolan waiting on me after we had gone uphill for a while and I needed to rest.This is looking down from the path at the path below.....it's kind of hard to see but it really is a path.

This is where I got to and rested while Nolan went farther while I rested.This is Nolan walking backing down the trial.....what a fun day!

I sure was glad to get to the truck and a cold soda after drinking the bottle of water I had brought. Then it was back to the trailer and the Taco Soup I had in the crock pot. It was really good....thanks Linda for the receipe from the RV-Dreams web site.

Well, I think that catches us up....I'll try to do better.

Day Trip from Terlingua to Presidio, TX

We decided today we would drive Farm Road 170 from Terlingua to Presidio about 50 miles. Was a very good drive, lots of scenery of the Rio Grande River and one little detour.

Start of detour......

Kind of just like a trail in the desert instead of a road. Nolan was not happy and it was very dusty!!!

This was a rest stop along the road....

Great drive, thanks Penny for the recommendation. We drove all the way into town and around a little before we started back. Got home and Nolan grilled steaks for dinner. Nice day in the desert!