Category: Places

9th -18th Dec

We began this trip, as we did last year, with no real fixed itinerary. Save for a few specific dates like meeting friends in Tennessee, our college football game in Texas, a weekend to come in Las Vegas with my brother, and obviously our end date, we have made our plans as we go along. But there comes a point, as we approach the final month or so, when we start ‘back-filling’ the bookings. We also had to think where we wanted to be, and where we could be, for Christmas and New Year, especially as this seemed to be coinciding with being at altitude, in the desert, in winter, in areas totally geared up for spring, summer and autumn tourism. Our itinerary was starting to firm up and we realised that we were a bit ahead of schedule with some days in hand. For this reason, and because we had been in the relative wilderness for 5 weeks, we booked ourselves into a city centre RV park in Tucson for 8 nights. Civilisation!

At first glance our park was quite austere. A small tarmac lot, surrounded by a tall wall with a large electronic gate, sandwiched between an apartment complex and a small school. It turned out to be a fantastic base for our week of city life. There was a supermarket and hardware store over the road, a long riverside cycle path a few hundred metres away and good bike and walking routes into downtown, which was only a mile or two away. There was also a great clubhouse space complete with pool table, table football and ping pong table, all of which were like private facilities as no-one else seemed to ever use them. My pool did improve a little, but I cannot compete with Hampson’s skills. His tertiary education was in English, History and Pool.

We walked and cycled a lot in Tucson. The manageress of the park thought we were crazy when we told her we had walked the 6km to a shopping mall one day. 4kms to a hairdressers another day (Well it is rare to fine a Toni & Guy!). Cycled 25 km along the river around town on the cycle paths and another day cycled up the steep road to the top of Sentinel Peak, or ‘A’ Mountain. This peak is a small cone-shaped hill overlooking the CBD and was a few km from camp. It is called ‘A’ mountain for the large whitewashed stone ‘A’ constructed on its upper face by freshmen University of Arizona in 1915. This has been maintained by subsequent generations of UA students.

Christmas is definitely on its way and I have managed to find a teeny-tiny TinCan appropriate tree. This is Albert. Named for the supermarket chain, Albertsons from which he was procured. He is 42cm tall including the pot and has a daily trip outside to photosynthesise.

Our stay coincided with the city’s ‘Parade of Lights’, a Christmas parade by any other name. This was a convoy of fifty or so vehicles, private and municipal, bedecked with countless strands of fairy lights and festive decorations. It was very pretty and as we stood in the cool and dark, all wrapped up, it made us quite nostalgic for the Northern Hemisphere winter Christmas. Despite sixteen years of living in the Southern Hemisphere, the concept of a summer Christmas, complete with long warm days, broad daylight parades, BBQs and salads has never really made sense. Just not cold and miserable enough ‘down under’.

A trip to the movies was too far to cycle and required a voyage by Uber, another advantage of city living. We went to see Mortal Engines (Hampson’s choice). This was not only in 3D, but in those fancy D-box seats too. These are reclining Lazy Boy style seats that move and shudder in synch with the action. Another level in movie going experience! Despite being only the second day since the movie’s release there were only about six others watching with us. Perhaps not the box office hit that it was hoped to be, although we both really enjoyed it.

Our weather here was delightful for the whole week. T-shirt weather in the day and not cold enough to need the heater on at night and bone dry. It is easy to see why the Snow Birds all flock from Canada and the Northern states to spend winters in these benign conditions. We spoke to the locals that we met about the heat of the summer. Its not bad, apparently, as long as you don’t go outside at all. Our Uber driver to the cinema was originally from Sudan. He thought it was too hot. Our homeward bound driver was one of the most verbose humans we have ever encountered. Like an olympian for chit-chat. Astounding.

Tucson is sandwiched between East and West Saguaro National Parks, the only National Parks created to preserve a specific species of plant, the very impressive and characterful Saguaro cactus. This is a very slow growing species that can be up to 70 years old before they start to sprout the branches like arms that can make them look very human. They stand like an army of upright soldiers on the hillsides, looking like they are waiting for something. As we left Tucson we headed out to Saguaro West, first stopping at the quite stupendously impressive Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. This is a zoological park that apparently is routinely listed in the top ten of its kind in the world. It is a 100 acre park with walking trails through the desert terrain and various exhibits of native animals like coyote, javelinas, mountain lions, beavers, otters, birds reptiles and spiders. It also, a bit bizarrely had a small aquarium and a stingray petting exhibit. My favourite area was the walk-in hummingbird aviary. There were 20-30 beautifully colourful tiny hummingbirds free-flying around our heads and drinking from eye level feeding stations. It was magical. After we left the museum we drove through the park, admiring the Saguaro, and then onward to our next stop a couple of hours up the road, an overnighter at a large park in Casa Grande. It was fine.

Visiting Tombstone was a bit of a dog-leg in our trip, but this place has been so immortalised in our childhood consciousnesses by Hollywood that we couldn’t resist spending a few days here.

The Wild West town, like many others of its era, was a mining boom town. Silver was the prize. It was founded in 1879 and grew from a population of 100 to 14000 over 7 years. Unfortunately in the mid-1880s the mines hit the water table and although heavy duty pumps kept the mines dry for a while a fire in 1886 destroyed the pump house and the pumps and mining was abandoned. It had a hay day of a mere 7 years. The town clung on by the skin of its teeth only because it was the county seat until 1929, avoiding becoming one of the many ghost towns left behind by the mining busts, and managing to retain its Wild West flavour.  It also owes its survival to the lore and legend of its most famed event: The 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral.  

This was a showdown between lawmen ‘goodies’: Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp and their dentist/gambling associate, Doc Holliday, who shot and killed cowboy ‘baddies’: Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton.  The exact spot of the gunfight is preserved, with a mannequin mock-up of the protagonists in their various positions, but there is also a live re-enactment show of events nearby.  The lead up, and fallout of this 30 second short moment in time captured the imagination of Hollywood and is the setting and backstory for at least eight movies, a few TV shows and several songs. The town is a ready-made film set. The preserved main street is made from packed earth, lined with wooden verandas, a thoroughfare for horse-drawn buggies and lots of folks were walking around dressed un-ironically as cowboys, holstered revolvers on hips.  This is the only place that we have seen civilians openly carrying firearms.  And it all seems entirely normal.  

Our stop for two nights was a small camp right in the middle of town. It was only about 50 metres from the OK Corral and the soundtrack to our stay was Ennio Morricone spaghetti western tracks and blank gunfire from the hourly re-enactment shows. Very mood inducing. We arrived in the tail end of the rain, get wet setting up, and then the sun came out again. Normal desert winter weather was resumed.  We went full ‘tourist‘ during our stay, which is the only way to go here.  We went to the gunfight show, toured the OK Corral site and associated museum exhibits, saw the film and cheesy, but quite impressive and informative, revolving diorama show, walked the streets having bizarrely developed slight swaggers and ‘itchy revolver hands’, had ‘old time photos’ taken in fancy dress, shot paintballs from a revolver at man-sized targets in a shooting alley and drank at the original long mahogany bar in an establishment called ‘Big Nose Kate’s’. (The Kate in question was the prostitute and on-off girlfriend of our gunfighting dentist, Doc Holliday. ) This is definitely a destination for the ‘themed party gathering’. There are numerous stores doing Wild West costume rental and sales, although not in great numbers whilst we were here.  We did, however, see a group of four grown men wandering around in lion and tiger onesies. Either a case of wrong town or wrong costumes. Best not to ask.

I wonder what all the 1880s townsfolk would have thought about the craziness of the 21st century tourism in Tombstone, but I suspect that life was a much bigger heap of bonkers back then. 

5th – 7th Dec

We left Roswell on a cold, cold morning having had to deal with our first frozen water hosepipe of the trip.  It wasn’t too much of a drama as the solution was to use water from the tank (which happily is kept liquid by the heating system) for essentials whilst the hose defrosted in the shower. We knew the deal when we made the decision to make this an Autumn/Winter trip but even the mild southern winters of the USA can get far colder than the winterless north of NZ. Throw in a few mountains, and this is going to be a shock to the system, especially as we have been avoiding winter altogether over the past few years.  

We headed west across the plains of New Mexico. This bit is enchanting, and now its name of ‘Land of Enchantment’ makes a lot more sense.  The road carved through miles and miles of empty plains, mostly devoid of any evidence of humans. West Texas was massive, but never felt as empty as this part of New Mexico. In the distance a mountain range loomed and eventually we reached it and climbed over it. There was snow at the top. There was also a tribal reservation and a petrol station with a casino. Or was it a casino with a petrol station? Not sure, but surely bizarre. We refuelled, resisted the urge to have a late morning game of roulette and descended the other side. As we were presented with the view of the huge flat Tularosa basin on the other side we had our first glimpse of the reason we have come this way. Gypsum fields or white sands. 

The nearest town to White Sands is called Alamogordo.  It appears fairly unprepossessing but surprisingly large and one could wonder why on earth it was here. All to service tourists visiting sand dunes? No. There is another fairly interesting reason. Tularosa basin is home to Holloman Airforce Base and The White Sands Missile Testing Range; a significant contribution to space innovation and exploration was made here.  The Trinity site, where the first atomic bomb was tested, is near here. The Space Shuttle landed here several times. HAM, the space chimp, was trained here.

HAM (Short for Holloman Aerospace Medical centre) was born in Cameroon, came to the USA after he was granted a green card (or stolen by poachers, one of the two,) and at 2 years of age was chosen from a group of 40 little hairy astronauts to be the first hominid to go on, and safely return from, a space flight. He was trained to do some tasks of earth, rewarded with a little banana pellet if he did them, punished with an electric shock if he didn’t, and then the space scientists compared his performance on earth to that in space. He was nearly as good in orbit, and all his vital signs were stable throughout, thus proving than humans could probably safely travel to space.  He retired after his flight and lived in a zoo in Washington DC for 17 years, and then moved to a North Carolina zoo with a colony of chimps for his last 2 years, dying in 1983 at the age of 24.  His remains returned to Alamogardo, where they are buried at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.  RIP little hairy spaceman.

We spent a couple of  hours at the aforementioned museum, which also is the serves as the International Space Hall of Fame. It was pretty interesting, had some great views over the basin, and we might have jumped at the opportunity to dress up a bit…We took this photo ourselves as we were all alone up there!

Our camp for the night was in town, but we didn’t venture out.  The next morning we headed off to the White Sands National Monument which was only about 16 miles away.  Given its proximity to the Missile Testing Range, about once a week the park road is closed for safety when they are testing.  

Brace yourselves for some physical geography facts:

This area used to be a shallow sea, which, when it retreated millions of years ago, left deep layers of gypsum, a soft mineral consisting of hydrated calcium sulphate. The mountains rose, taking the gypsum high. The water from the melting glaciers dissolved the mineral and washed it back into the basin, and rain and snow today does the same. With no outflow rivers, the water from the standing lakes evaporates, leaving the mineral in crystal form, selenite. The crystals are broken down by wind until they form a bright white sand. This gypsum sand is used in the fertiliser and building industries. Wall board, plaster of Paris, blackboard chalk and alabaster all owe their whiteness to it. In this basin the gypsum has formed the most spectacular and unworldly area of bright white dunes, protected from plunder by the National Parks Service as White Sands National Monument. 

We caught the tail end of a closure, and were first in line of the queue to get in.   The Sands are amazing with miles and miles of bright white dunes which are dotted with the occasional grasses and yucca trees.  There is plenty of wildlife here, but mainly small critters like spiders, moths, lizards and snakes.  Natural selection has hit fast-forward here as despite the dunes only being a few thousand years old, many of these animals have evolved to be very pale in colour. 

We parked up and set out on a designated loop trail. The info on the trailhead sign said that the 5km would take 3 hours because it was just up and down the dunes, following marker posts. So we didn’t do that and risked straying from the path to do our own 1 hour walk. The temperature was in the early 60 degs F and very pleasant.

This place must be unbearable in the heat of the summer, and getting lost, which would be very easy, could be quite dangerous. We didn’t see the bleached bones of any lost tourists or any wildlife, only plenty of lizard foot prints and a few fighter jets and helicopters doing military manoeuvres. We safely made it back to the carpark and had our picnic sat atop a dune, looking at the mountains. Not a bad lunch spot.

We rolled on across the plains of the basin and crossed another small mountain range to our next stop, Las Cruses. This is a sprawling desert town straddling the I-10 interstate. Named for some crosses erected to commemorate a band of travellers who were attacked and killed in this area in the 18th C, it is now a medium sized town, home to many who work in the nearby military facilities.  It has a couple of historic areas and our camp for the night was within a short walk of one of them, Mesilla. This had a cute little square and we found a cool locals bar for a drink then had an enormous plate of Mexican food each at a nearby restaurant.

Despite going out completely unprepared we managed to be entirely unaffected by a strange and unusual event than happened during our evening out. It rained. Really hard. After weeks and weeks of travelling through desert and battling dust and dry skin, the heavens opened and it poured. Happily we managed to get home between downpours and stayed completely dry.  This weather was the start of our exposure to the wintery storm that was to crash across the more northern and eastern states, bringing plenty of snow to those areas, but only a few hours of rain to us.  This continued the next day as we did a long day of driving to leave New Mexico and to our next state, Arizona. Pretty miserable conditions on the highway, but we plodded along and arrived at our next stop, the town of Tombstone, safely.

1st – 5th Dec

We left our roost in the Guadelupe Mountains in an ongoing cool brisk breeze but glorious sunshine.  Our mini convoy of two truck campers cruised the easy 40 miles over the ongoing desert plains dotted with oil wells, across the border into New Mexico and to the tourist-activity-of-the-day, a visit to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park.   We followed the tail of our new buddies up the hill to the visitors centre, parked up and set off on one the most spectacular 2 mile walks that I think I have ever done.

The Cavern complex was discovered in 1898 by a teenager called Jim White, who explored it with a homemade wire ladder and gonads bigger than mine. By 1923 it had been declared a National Park and visitors were descending the 230m into the caverns down a narrow switchback path, using rickety ladders and steps to get into the numerous rooms. By 1932 two elevator shafts had been sunk to link the main cavern room with the surface. Now it has a new visitor centre with shop and cafe at the top, 4 elevators, and a cafe underground.  You can get the elevator down, but there is now an amazing  path that winds down from the visitor centre into the mouth of the cavern, through numerous chambers and rooms into the Big Room, an enormous chamber 8.2 acres in size.  There are countless formations, fabulously lit, and the whole journey to, and around the Big Room is 2 miles long. It was stupendous. Epic. Photographs do it no justice at all.

The outer rooms are also home to another large population of Mexican Bats which put on a great show as they leave at dusk to feed. They, like the Austin bats that we did not see because they had already gone to Mexico for the winter, had already gone to Mexico for the winter. Don’t blame them either.

We surfaced by elevator and all had lunch in the cafe before saying our goodbyes to Val and Wayne, who were heading back to Colorado via a night in Roswell. We weren’t going that far. Our next stop was in a park north of Carlsbad for 3 nights, where we had arranged a mobile RV repair guy to come out to mend our water heater.  Carlsbad is not a pretty place. What was a small town servicing the caverns is now a large sprawling conurbation servicing an oil boom.  Most of the workers, who are predominantly single men, live in featureless dusty RV parks and the main strip was a collection of food joints, liquor stores and truck sales and service shops. I imagine this place is quite a harsh place to live. After a brief stop for provisions we escaped the town and headed 20 miles north to our camp for the next 3 nights. We had no plans to do anything for the next few days, so being out of town didn’t matter at all.  We quite successfully achieved our goal of nothingness with the addition of:

1) a 3 mile stroll down a track from the camp to a nearby reservoir. This was billed as a ‘nature trail to bird refuge’, but the reality was ‘dry, dusty, rutted track littered with beer bottles, plastic bags and spent shotgun cartridges leading to body of water with a couple of coots drifting around on it’. It was a bit optimistic to have taken the binoculars.

2) Three loads of laundry.

3) Getting a BBQ dinner from the camp kitchen. We had to not only order our meal in the morning, but also book a time slot for it to be prepared. We snagged the very latest slot available, which was 6.30pm. This is the land of the early dinner.

4) Getting the water heater fixed. Warren, the RV fixit guy came and after an hour of diagnostics, seemingly fixed it. He is now the 4th person to be involved with this blasted heater, but by far and away the most competent. We were disappointed the next day, when, as we prepared to leave Carlsbad area, it didn’t seem to be working fully. After a phone call he arranged for an assistant to drive another part out to us. I replaced this that evening, but to no effect. Our hearts were heavy with the prospect of having to arrange another person to come and look at it, and spending even more money on it, at some future point on our travels. But then we managed to magically fix it by……. flipping the fuse switch back into the ON position! Still not sure if this had tripped, or been left off by Warren, but who cares. Hot water is hot water. Hoorah!

Our next stop in ‘The Land of Enchantment’, as New Mexico is charmingly called, was Roswell. Alien City. Land of the little green men, the flying saucer, a plethora of naff gift shops and a whole heap of intrigue. It was a shortish drive through some fairly un-enchanting portions of New Mexico to this mythic town.  It is, on the face of it, a town like any other, with a few notable exceptions.

1. In July 1947 someone saw something odd, found some bits of something odd and reported it to the authorities.  The military, who had an enormous presence in the area at the time, became very interested and took over ‘investigations’.  What ever it was that  the military were up to and had manage to stuff up was frantically covered up and the ‘little green men/flying saucer’ rumours were theatrically ‘quashed’ to feed the appetite of the conspiracy theorists and draw attention away from the truth.  (That’s my opinion anyway.)
2. Roswell needs alien conspiracy theories.
3. Aliens are everywhere, especially the plastic/chainsaw sculpture/inflatable types.
4. My husband was very excited about coming here because he, and bizarrely also my mother, believe that they are aliens themselves. (Nuts, the pair of them).
5. In the visitors centre there are some friendly aliens that will pose for a photo for free. How friendly is that?

We came, we toured the museum, we had a burger lunch, we visited a very eclectic art gallery and we spent one night in a small RV park just out of town. The host was friendly here too.

26th Nov- 1st Dec

We cruised back to Alpine, stocked up on provisions and headed another 20 miles north to a town called Fort Davis. This sits in the foothills of the Davis mountains and is the closest town to the McDonald Observatory, one of the world’s foremost facilities in one of the world’s best dark skies regions.  We had booked tickets to one of the thrice weekly ‘Star Parties’ when the observatory hosts an educational evening, with use of some of its smaller telescopes. The observatory, allied to the University of Texas, has some massive telescopes one of which, at 11m in diameter is one of the largest in the world.

Massive telescope

Fort Davis itself, as the name might suggest, was originally a military camp in the second half of the 19th C, and is the highest town in Texas, at about 5000ft. It has an impressive court house and lots of original old buildings, around which one can do a walking tour and the old fort is a national historic monument.

We spent one day mooching around town on foot and bike, doing the tour, browsing gift shops and the historic ‘drug store’, and, on recommendation of the lady in the visitors centre, had a fabulous Mexican lunch at a very unprepossessing restaurant on the other side of town that was so low-key it might have been a military secret itself.

Actual secret mexican restaurant

The Star Party was the highlight of our time here. The observatory was a 17 mile drive up into the hills and having liberated Big Dave from TC and packed a picnic supper, we headed up in time for sunset.

 The back deck of Big D was a fine place for a mug of french onion soup and a cheese sandwich whilst we watched the sun go down and we spent an hour chatting to a fellow party-goer, Jack, whilst waiting for darkness.  It was a perfect evening for star gazing. Crystal clear, moonless, windless and relatively warm (apparently) and our modest numbers of 120 were far preferable to the 500-600 people crowds of the previous Thanksgiving week. The evening started in a circular amphitheatre dimly lit in red. Our host gave a very informative and entertaining hour-long presentation, pointing out stars, constellations, planets and distant galaxies with the most amazing laser pointer that seemed to reach all the way out into the universe. He blew our minds with facts and figures of size, distance and time and despite the dropping temperatures, we didn’t want it to end.  The second half of the evening involved being able to peer into each of the five small telescopes that they had set up, both mobile and in small observatories. All in all it was epic and now (well, this week) we both want to be astronomers.

The next day we took advantage of an unfettered Big D and drove 20 miles to the next town of Marfa.  This might be known to some as the location of the 1956 movie Giant staring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Dennis Hopper, but nowadays its identity is closely allied to its art community.  In 1971 the minimalist artist Donald Judd came to town and eventually bought another old army base to create an artist retreat and location for his massive permanent art installations.

Hampson being serious in the presence of an art installation

 One of these is a field containing numerous massive concrete boxes, and the other comprises of countless aluminium boxes housed in two massive artillery sheds.

Me, not being very serious

As with most modern art, our baseline was ‘skeptical and contemptuous’ but the aluminium boxes were impressive for their numbers, uniformity and setting.  Photos inside were not allowed unfortunately.

Building containing aluminium boxes, honest

After a very tasty cafe lunch we wandered around the town to discover that it was a bit soulless. Many of the galleries were shut and the the shops that we found open seemed to be catering to a type of wealthy tourist that wasn’t obviously in town today. Our last activity was visiting another massive permanent installation that was a series of semi-crushed car body parts welded together.  We weren’t convinced.  Unfortunately we didn’t hang around in Marfa long enough to witness its other curiosity, The Marfa Lights. These are unexplained twinkling lights that happen over the plains close to the town that are visible on many nights each year. There are lots of theories, but the car headlights likely explain most if not all of them.

Our next, and last, stop in Texas was the Guadelupe National Park.  This was   another beautiful drive through the plains of West Texas, back through Marfa and then north. There were a couple of curiosities along the way: an homage to the film Giant just north of Marfa,

and a cool border patrol radar blimp thing further up the road.

The Guadelupe Mountains rear up from the plains, headed by the sheer rock face of the peak El Capitain.  The tallest point in Texas, Guadelupe Peak, is also here and we planned to ‘knock the b*&%$#d off’ to quote a famed NZ mountaineer. Our camp was a ‘first-come-first-served’ carpark site without any services at the trailhead. There was plenty of space on our arrival and we found a corner spot with a view of the hills.

One of our nearby co-campers was another big Lance camper, a bit smaller than TC, sat upon a black truck very like Big Dave. Of course a conversation was struck up, how could we not! Val and Wayne, and their beautiful black lab, Jada, were from Colorado and we got on like a house on fire.  Due to the arrival of some very windy weather we couldn’t do the peak hike, but the next day they joined us, or we joined them, not sure, for a more sheltered 3 hour canyon hike up a dry river bed to ‘Devil’s Hall’.

Them

Us

Devil’s Hall

 

Later, although it was only 4.30pm, they came round for drinks. They left nearly 6 hours later after many beers, a bottle of wine, the significant portion of a very nice bottle of 16 yr old Lagavulin, a cobbled together meal and a game of scrabble. It was our first Tin Can entertaining evening and our first doggy visitation after Jada made herself at home on the sofa for the evening. She was at high risk of being dog-napped as we fell in love with her.

Our next stop was the Carlsbad Caverns, a short journey across the state border into New Mexico. Wayne and Val were headed the same way the next morning, so we went in a mini Lance camper convoy of two.

 

 

20th – 26th Nov

An 80 mile road from the small university town of Alpine runs down to the western entrance of Big Bend National Park, and the settlement of Terlingua. This is 80 sweeping miles of perfect black-top through the astounding beauty of the Chihauhuan Desert, an arid landscape home to a few vast ranches set amongst scrubby flora, scattered RV/shed dwellings and countless packs of wild chihuahuas…..probably. After the humidity of Eastern Texas, the dry air of West Texas was a welcome change, although it left me with skin hydration towards the ‘lizard’ end of the spectrum and a particularly irritating dry cough. Nothing that moisturiser and cold beer couldn’t try and solve…

Terlingua is an odd place to say the least.  The original mining town was established in the 1880s after cinnabar, the mercury ore, was discovered in the area. It boomed, then busted and was deserted in the 1940s, leaving a ghost town. It was slowly re-inhabited from the 1960s and now is a loose collection of ruins, renovated original buildings, RV/shed dwellings & small adobe homes. It has a small permanent population, a medium population of seasonal workers and drifters who stay awhile and is a popular tourist stop for visitors to the park. We arrived at one of the busiest times of the year, Thanksgiving week.  The weather is benign now and the Texans arrive in their hoards to spend time in this beautiful corner of the country.  We had six nights here and found space at a camp which combined RV sites, a motel, tent camping, shop, cafe and petrol station. We had no TV reception, no cell phone coverage, minimal wifi and coin operated showers. ‘Resort’ it was not, but the views were epic, sunset spectacular and we had plenty of space despite the crowds. Mexico is just across the Rio Grande river and modern American life is a long way away. It definitely felt like the end of the road and quite wild.

Big Bend National Park was just a  few miles down the road and it is a vast (bigger than the state of Rhode Island) and gorgeous swathe of desert with the impressive Chisos Mountains rising up in its centre. This area is a hiking mecca with countless trails and it is the reason most people make the journey here.  We did a great day hike up to the tallest point, Emory Peak. 2000ft of elevation and 10 miles round trip was enough to earn our picnic lunch and give us sore legs for the next few days. It was stunning. I have to admit, although Hampson would rather not, that we didn’t make it to the very top.

Nearly the top

The last 20 ft was a sheer rock face scramble up to a small plinth, already over-occupied by lots of fellow hikers who obviously had less fear than us.  The benefits of ‘summiting’ were outweighed by the risks of falling to our deaths and we were content to have nearly made it. Besides, we were starving and had sandwiches to eat.

The area is home to black bears and mountain lions, but despite keeping our eyes peeled, we saw none. That’s not to say, however, that we were not seen by them.  We got chatting to a couple on our way down who had been behind us as we were descending and they had watched a small black bear following us just off the trail for a a few minutes. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Our second outing into the park was a driving day. We took a gravel road 15 miles down to the Rio Grande and an impressive canyon called Santa Elena. The road was a bit bumpy, very ridged, and Big Dave, without the weight of TC is not a comfortable ride. His suspension is heavy duty and we arrived bone shaken and dusty. The gravel road was also lined by gnarly thorny bushes, and now the passenger side of Big D has a slightly less perfect paint job than previously. We have a date with a bottle of T-cut polish and some elbow grease at some time in the near future.

Mexico here                                        Hampsons                                    USA here

There was a short walk up into the canyon that involved wading across a small tributary of the river. It was a bit alien to us citizens of two island nations that a different country can be just a stone’s throw away. Literally, even with a pathetic girl throw. After the walk we decided that our dwindling fuel would get us back via the far more comfortable paved ‘long way round’ and we completed our loop drive home via a picnic lunch with a view.

Another thing that we did during our stay here was a rafting trip down the Rio Grande. This started with having to get up before dawn, a very painful thing for our lazy selves, and meeting at the shop to catch our up-river shuttle. The shop did a roaring sideline in selling coffees to the bleary eyed punters and by the time we were on the road we were nearly awake.  The road to the put-in wound its way along the river, through the other enormous park in this neck of the woods, Big Bend Ranch State Park. This road had been hailed as one of the USAs best drives and I can see why. Our rafting party was two boats, each with a guide, who did all the work of steering and paddling.

We had a very pleasant day watching the world go by as we drifted down river. The border is the deepest channel of the river as it was surveyed in 1880-something, so we spent the whole day in and out Mexico, re-entering the USA illegally. I think we got away with it though.

The river wound through a couple of canyons and down a few class 1&2 rapids. The danger levels were non-existent, the ‘wet-bottom’ factor was low to medium and our river-bank lunch in a sandy sun-trap was delicious. Our boat-mates were Jeff and Jen from Austin and it turns out that our recent stay in Austin had been in their neighbourhood. (Jen’s ‘wet-bottom’ factor was at about the level of her naval as she misjudged her raft dismount at the end of the day and found that 1880s deep channel.)

We had two meals out here. The first was very respectable steak at the quirky semi-subterranean local’s bar, La Kiva, on Thanksgiving. This place has a chequered history, most notably for the suspicious death of its proprietor, Glenn Felts in  2014. Another local, a rafting guide from the same company as we had used, stood trial for his murder, but was acquitted. In 2015, during the trial, National Geographic filmed a documentary series in the town called ‘Badlands, Texas’. Ostensibly the timing of the filming was a coincidence, and the coverage of the trial an afterthought, but the locals are sceptical. The documentary, rather than the murder, divided the community, and many believe the not-guilty verdict was flawed.

Our second dinner was a fantastic Mexican meal in a tiny family-run restaurant near our camp. We took advice from a chap at the next table who was a regular and had two amazing plates of food. I can’t remember what Nick had, but mine was beef in ‘red sauce’. No frills deliciousness.

On our last day we cycled the 5 miles from our camp up to the Ghost Town area. The road there was mostly uphill and it was a bit warm. Seeing as we had already visited this area in the car, our purpose was not really exploring but exercising and one of us might have enjoyed it more than the other. We had a good iced latte at the other end and the view was good. After a mooch around the old cemetery we headed home, but unfortunately the brisk headwind completely cancelled out the glory of the downhill run. Neither of us enjoyed that.

By the time we left Terlingua, so had nearly everyone else and we practically had our camp to ourselves for our last night before we headed back up the road to Alpine and its semi-civilisation. On the road, about 20 miles north of Terlingua is a US  border security post. This is mainly keeping an eye out for illegal Mexican interlopers, but the jovial chit-chat from the border patrol officers was thinly veiled sleuthing and our British accents, New Zealand home and Washington plates had us having to dig out our passports and visas to reassure them that we were legal.  Amazing how stress levels increase under scrutiny. I couldn’t even remember which airport we arrived at.

 

15th – 20th Nov

With slightly heavy hearts we extracted ourselves from our Austin oasis and continued west, further into Texas Hill Country and to our next stop, Fredericksburg.  The hills in question are very modest, but after the flatlands of eastern Texas they completely change the flavour of this vast state.  Texas is huge. It is, to be fair, not the largest state. That accolade goes to Alaska, which is more than twice it’s size, but let’s put that to one side as an incomprehensible vastness more like the moon. (Isn’t that right, McWillies?!) If Texas was a country, it would be the 40th largest in the world, being about the same land area as France.

The Hill Country felt a lot like South Australia: dry, scrubby and undulating, and the area around Fredericksburg is gathering vineyards at such a pace that it will be a Texan Barossa before you know it.  The town itself was originally settled by German immigrants and has lots of residual influences. There are strasse where there would normally be streets, wurst where sausages should be and there is a kirche in the marktplatz.  The town has one wide main street lined with businesses catering to mainly one type of customer: the ‘weekender’.  People come here from the cities in their hoards for this 48 hour excursion of eating, wine ‘tasting’ (in large quantities), and shopping (if they are in the market for leather goods, cowboy boots and hats, home decor items and general kitch).  It is land of the wedding, the hen weekend and the romantic getaway. It was charming, but the locals say it is being taken over by Californians who have moved in and turned all the smaller homes into Air B&Bs, catering to the tourists, but pushing out the young families. Such is the familiar story of progress.

Fredericksburg also has the highly renowned National Museum of the Pacific War full of WWII exhibits and an area outside with a recreated combat war zone. We were wandering the streets on Veterans Day to the soundtrack of a re-enactment: gunfire and shells, with a vintage P-51 Mustang fighter plane doing laps around the town and doing fly-overs of the museum. Tragically we learnt that the loud bang that we had heard a short while later was not another part of the show, but the plane crashing, killing both veteran pilot and 93 year old passenger. Very sad, but miraculously it went down in an apartment block car park in town, avoiding  anyone else.

Our camp was a lovely park about 1 mile out of town, so an easy walk or cycle to get around.  There was an nice ride out to the other side of town and a short hike up a hillock, called Cross Mountain, for obvious reasons. Good view from the top. We were again, the only people travelling by  bike.

Our 4 days in Fredericksburg was very serene, but slightly marred by snot and coughing. The cold snap had brought me a cold virus. This is the first winter we are having since 2015, and I have avoided getting sick for a few years. I guess you can’t dodge the bullets for ever. Hampson, however, despite being stuck in a small tin can with me and my affliction, has dodged it so far. I am taking note of his sympathy levels for future reference… We met some interesting park residents, including a couple who were off to NZ a few days later for a 6 week trip to see family. Earlier this year they had cycled 4400miles coast to coast, tent camping along the way. Now THAT is travelling (or madness. One or the other!)

From Fredericksburg we drove miles and miles through the unchanging landscape of West Texas to where the Hill Country comes to an end and the flats and oil fields begin again, at Fort Stockton. This was just an overnight stop for us on our way to Big Bend National park. The town is full of RV parks along the highway corridor but this is not a holiday destination. The vast majority of people here are either passing through or are oilfield workers. It seemed a strange place, but our park was lovely. It had a small cafe that was open from 5-7.30pm, and we couldn’t resist having our dinner there. It was perfect: catfish for me, deep fried steak (with a fried chicken style crispy coating) for Hampson, both served with overcooked green beans, mashed potato, gravy and a biscuit each. (Biscuit = savoury scone in this part of the world). True Texan fayre.

The next day we continued our ‘wilds of Texas’ drive down to the inland edge of this vast land, Big Bend National Park and our stop, Terlingua.

 

 

11th – 15th Nov

‘Keep Austin Weird’ is the unofficial slogan for this kooky city in the heart of Texas. It isn’t small, having about a million inhabitants; it is the 11th most populous city, the second most populous state capital, and it is one of the fastest growing large cities in the USA. It is a little pocket of liberal blue in the otherwise conservative red blanket of Texas. It has food trucks and independent eateries as it tries to fend off the the march of global food chains. It has city parks and a lake in the centre of the city. It has cycle lanes, paths & trails, pedestrian bridges, pavements, buses and the car is not king. You can dare to be different here, and nobody cares. It has more live music than you can shake a stick at and BBQ to die for. In short, it manages to combine all that is wonderful about Texas, Texans and the USA without a lot of the negative characteristics of American cities. It was delightful.

Our positive experience here was in large part due to the place that we managed to stay.  This was a slightly shabby tree-filled city centre RV park, a stone’s throw from everything. It was mostly occupied by permanent residents in a variety of rigs from buses to old airstreams and definitely had an Armistead Maupin vibe going on.

We arrived at lunchtime having made an easy getaway from our carpark camp at College Station and it was a fairly short and easy journey into Austin. We set up and hot-footed it to the very nearby collection of food trucks for a very satisfactory lunch of fish tacos and Thai fried rice. From there it was an easy stroll to the nearby Zilker park, and the jewel of this area, Barton Springs Pool. This is a municipal outdoor natural swimming pool fed by a diverted thermal spring, keeping it at a constant 20-23 degrees all year round. It is about 3 acres of surface area and about 300m/900ft long. The water was amazingly clear and even during the ongoing unseasonably chilly weather there were some hardy souls doing some lengths. What a facility to have in the heart of the city, especially during those sticky Texan summers.  The outflow stream was home to turtles (what I would call a terrapin) basking on rocks and tree stumps and allegedly the eponymous rare Barton Springs Salamander, only found here. Didn’t see any of those.

The next day was freezing cold. Brass monkeys cold. Arctic polar blast cold. We stayed in with the heating on and didn’t emerge until about 3.30pm when we walked up to the nearby cinema to see a showing of Bohemian Rhapsody. I know some critics are disappointed with some of the artistic licence taken, but who cares. It was, to someone who grew up in a Queen-loving family, magnificent. Rami Malek was fantastic.  The cinema, in true Austin fashion was independent, had alternate rows of seats and fixed tables and waitress service of a fine selection of food and beverages. We had intra-movie beers and appetisers in lieu of afternoon tea and were happy as pigs in the proverbial.  We emerged into darkness of evening and scampered across the road to a very nice bar which has a renowned food truck stationed outside. Once you have ordered food outside, they will deliver it, and you can eat it inside. How civilised!

The next day was slightly warmer and we walked across the river/lake to downtown for a snuffle around. The highlights of the day were a visit to the State Capitol Building and an amazing cup of soup and a shared toasted sandwich for lunch. We are easy to keep happy! Later that day we cycled down to Congress Avenue Bridge to witness an Austin spectacle, the dusk emergence of nearly a million bats from their roosts under the bridge.

(This is a mural. Not a real bat…)

The colony, now the largest urban bat colony in the world, originally moved in in the 1980s when the bridge was renovated, creating slots in the underside of the deck that was the perfect size for a bat to hang-out. (Pun intended.) They are migratory, and winter in Mexico, leaving Austin in the first half of November. We had it on good authority that they were still in residence but after very cold 90 minutes stood on the bridge, dusk fell and not a bat was to be seen. I think Mexico had called, and I am not surprised. The small assembled crowd drifted away in dribs and drabs as this realisation hit and the hypothermia kicked in. We went home to defrost and eat.

If Barton Springs is the jewel of the city, its crown has to be the town lake, (named Ladybird Lake after the wife of Austin son, President Johnson) and the 12 mile multi-use leafy trail that runs around it. The lake is formed from a dammed section of the Colorado River that runs through the city, and provides facilities for boating, rowing, sailing, paddle boarding and kayaking and the trail is a magnet for walkers, joggers, cyclists and countless dogs. We spent a very pleasant few hours doing the loop the next day, marvelling at how these sorts of facilities completely change the feel of a city. It was a joy.  The fine day was capped off by a fine dinner. We walked half a mile to an Austin institution, Terry Blacks BBQ. We could see it was popular by the fact that the 30 min queue for the canteen style restaurant was snaking out the door into the cold. The waiting was assuaged by the fact that you could start drinking your beer whilst standing in line. Also civilised.  It was Delicious. I need say no more. No carry-out boxes for us. Ate ’til we we were groaning.

We were sorry vacate our little slice of Austin heaven the next day, but onward we must roll, further into Hill Country, Texas.

10th – 12th Nov

College football is a phenomenon here. It is televised and can get some pretty decent viewing figures, but the thirst and passion for the teams are more reflected in the colossal size of some of the home stadia.  Supporters are current students, alumni of the college, family and friends of current and past students, locals of the  home towns of the colleges and complete randoms. Like Us.

Going to a college football game was on our original list of things we would like to do on our USA travels. We wanted to go to a big one, to see a team with a massive stadium filled with crazy fans; and we wanted to experience true tailgating.

There were a few things to co-ordinate: knowing where we we going to be on our travels, a big game with available tickets, and finding a close-by campsite. We had spent an afternoon of intense multi-device research in early September in Connecticut and locked in our plan. We secured tickets to see Texas A&M (Agricultural & Mechanical) play Ole Miss at Kyle Field in College Station on Nov 10th. This stadium holds over 102,000 people. That is nearly double the capacity of Eden Park, NZ’s national stadium. It’s crazy. By capacity it is the 5 largest stadium in the world, after Rungrado (North Korea, 150,000) and 3 other college football stadia.  We also managed to book an RV spot on the campus, only a mile from the stadium, for 2 nights. This was essentially a gravel carpark with spray painted lines to demarcate the sites, so no facilities at all. The price did not reflect this obviously. But this was to also be our tailgating experience as it was to be the weekend home of about 100 other rigs, all armed with awnings, gazebos, chairs, BBQs, smokers, outside TVs, coolers of beer and tables groaning with meat, chips, dips and sides. Many of these people come only to tailgate and don’t actually go to the game.

We really had no idea what to expect when we pitched up at about midday on the day before the game. We were fairly early and one of the first to set up. (The place looked quite different about 5 hours after the photo was taken, by which time the place was heaving!).

We had some lunch then rugged up warm to walk into the central campus to buy some supporters gear. The balmy Indian summer had given way to an icy arctic blast. It was cold, cold, cold now. On our way out we got chatting to a nearby neighbour called Bruce. He had done a solo set-up of an epic tailgating outfit based around a large RV/horse trailer and was now happily sat watching football on the large flatscreen TV. His wife and their friend (both alumni) were joining him later, and they had 2 kids between them who were current students and would come by too. He was kind enough to extend an open invitation for us to join their festivities over the weekend, and we accepted straight away. How could we refuse?! This looked like a professional outfit.  We walked up to the merchandise store and both bought a body warmer in team colours, and I bought a woolly hat too. If the game had been last week we’d have been buying T-shirts. Madness! Then we walked across campus to a recommended bar called Dixie Chicken, which is a college institution and the sort of place that looks like nothing from the outside but was enormous and packed full on the inside. We did the sensible late-afternoon thing and shared 2 jugs of beer without eating and then rolled ‘home’. It was fully dark by the time we got back to Tin Can and it took us a while to find him amongst the new arrivals. The place was buzzing and noisy. Nearly every rig had a generator running to power the business of having fun. This was to be the soundtrack of the weekend. After some stomach-lining food we headed back out to join Bruce, wife Kenny Kaye and friend Kevin for drinks. They were amazingly welcoming and we had some top-tips for being true supporters for the game the next day. This included the gift of two ‘spirit towels’ from Kenny Kaye. She said we would find out what to do with them….!

The game was scheduled for 11am. The time dictated entirely by the TV networks, and the least favoured slot. Too early for pre-game tailgating. We basically got up, had breakfast, dressed in lots of warm layers and set off walking to the stadium by 9.30am. We managed to find a cup of coffee on the concourse and then took our seats.  For this we had to gain some altitude having deliberately booked seats as high up as we could. This would have given us some cover in case of rain, but mainly gave us a fantastic view of the whole spectacle.

The team is known as The Aggies (from ‘Agricultural’) and the entire A&M student body are known as The 12th Man. This originates from an episode in 1922 when the Aggies were playing an away game in Dallas against a much stronger team. The team suffered multiple injuries and potentially might have run out of players to field. An A&M student E. King Gill, who had been a Aggies player earlier in the season, and was a Dallas local, was in the stands that day. He was pulled from the crowd and asked to be on stand-by to play if needed, a 12th man. He willingly did so, joined the bench but in the end was not needed. The Aggies won the game despite being the underdogs and the day was cemented in A&M history. Now the student fans all stand for the entire length of every game, demonstrating their support and readiness to be called upon if needed. They constantly sing, or ‘yell’, lead by ‘yell leaders’, they link arms and sway to certain songs and they twirl their small white spirit towels above their heads. (Mainly to put off the opposition). Now we knew what they were for! We had a ball. A 3.5 hour chilly ball. And we won! A much needed victory after a few losses.

After the game we headed back to camp and joined our adopted tailgate again. There was a mouthwatering offering of freshly smoked meat on the BBQ, and a fantastical amount of accompaniments. Our offerings were worse than paltry in comparison, and didn’t even make it out of the bag, I don’t think.  There were a few more people to meet, including Cameron and Lane, the ‘kids’, who gave us the current student insights! The party was reasonably civilised and a bit curtailed by the cold and the long day, but we had a great time and very grateful to our new Texan friends for including us. It had been an amazing weekend.

The next morning we surfaced to an already half empty parking lot. Even Bruce had managed to pack up and leave before we got up. We did our easiest pack up so far, and set of west to Austin.

 

 

3rd -9th Nov

We left New Orleans on another lovely sunny morning, sailing above the swamps on more of the elevated highways.  Water is never very far away in the flatlands of Louisiana. It looks pretty, but something to be admired from a distance. Too many alligators, water moccasins (snakes) and mosquitos for my liking.

Lunchtime coincided with our tourist activity of the day which was to stop off at Avery Island.  Avery Island is one of the few elevated areas in this neck of the woods being essentially a dome of salt linked to the mainland by a short causeway, and it is home to the world famous Tabasco sauce.  All the sauce is still made here, to the original recipe, with peppers descended from the original seed stock and the company is still run by the same family. I love that. The factory complex was in some beautiful red brick buildings surrounded by gardens and the air was filled with the unmistakeable aroma of hot sauce. Having had a perfect, mildly spicy lunch sat on the veranda of the very pleasant restaurant we did the self guided tour around the visitor area of the complex. It was charming.  Chilli sauce and other interesting herbs and spices are so common nowadays, but I remember Tabasco from my youth in the UK: the most exotic ingredient in the cupboard. The Queen likes it too, from the looks of things.

Our next two nights had us in a small wooded site just on the outskirts of  a small town called Abbeville. This is known (mostly) for its annual omelette festival when the town has a weekend of fun, music, food and drinking, capped off by twenty or so exalted chefs creating a 5000 egg omelette in a 12ft diameter skillet over a log fire in the middle of main street and serving it out to the assembled crowds.

This is a custom imported from France, from which this area takes huge influence.  By sheer coincidence our visit coincided with the weekend of the 34th incarnation of this celebration. We arrived in still blazing sunshine on the Saturday and opted to stay in camp and enjoy the peace and quiet. We broke out the camp chairs, the BBQ and were entertained by the squirrels. Overnight the weather broke and the heavens opened. The campsite became a bayou and we sat inside awaiting news of ommelette cancellation on the Facebook page. Nope. The show was to go on. Happily the forecast was correct, the rain stopped and the town came out to play again. We cycled into town to observe the battiness.  We had beers whilst we marvelled at the scale of the task and I bought a commemorative fried egg necklace.

The omelette was more like a parsley frittata, but very edible. Abbeville was a sweet little town; I wonder what happens here on non-omelette days?

 

After Abbeville we slipped south towards the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. We were to see our 3rd coast of the USA, the southern one. (We saw west and east coasts last year, but I don’t think that we can count the Upper Peninsula Michigan on the shore of Lake Superior as a northern coast. Northern Alaska may be the tick in that box) This land is very flat, created by the sediment washing down from the Mississippi. The road was very straight, quiet and for the most part was set back from the sea by huge tracts of marsh land. Every now and then we passed through a small settlement with a beach, or access to the sea via a channel. These seemed to mainly be holiday houses with some permanent homes, but generally the place was deserted as it is now out of season. Despite the heat and humidity this area is busiest in the summer months when the hoards descend. The other thing that has completely defined and reshaped the human habitation of this coastline is the storm damage it has suffered over the past decade or two, and the constant threat of future events.  There really is nothing for miles to protect from storm surges. Those ‘homes’ are now mostly comprised of large semi-permanent RVs, the original cottages and houses having been turned to matchsticks in 2005 by hurricane Rita, and again in 2009 by Ike. There have been multiple hurricanes of note, but these are the two that the locals talk about. Some people have rebuilt their houses, high up on sturdy poles to satisfy new stringent building regulations, but the RV is king. Cheaper to buy than building a home, quick to move in and, more importantly, removable if the weather forecast is looking particularly dicey. To be honest. I think that a lot of people couldn’t afford to rebuild. In a small town called Cameron (small town, but biggest local conurbation)we had a  very satisfactory lunch stop at a roadside establishment called Anchors Up Grill.  We shared a cheesy spicy bacon and fat shrimp po’boy sandwich and crinkle-cut fries. The words ‘died’ and ‘heaven’ spring to mind…

For the princely sum of $1 a small vehicle ferry took us from Cameron across a small shipping canal so we could continue west along the coast. Our next stop was just for one night at a beachside village called Holly Beach.

This was a veritable ghost town with only a few permanent residents.  It was completely flattened by Rita in 2005 and it now is a town on stilts.

After the rain the heat and humidity had returned and the mosquitos were like rabid bats.  After total body applications of toxic levels of DEET we grabbed some beers and scurried through the clouds of the suckers to the beach for sunset, which was amazing. The distant oil rigs were a small taste of how the landscape would change as we travelled further west into Texas.

The next day, after another hour or so of travelling along the straight flat coastal road, we left Louisiana by means of a long bridge over another shipping canal and entered Texas. Fossil fuels and their conversion into useable substances are the heartbeat of this part of Texas. There are oil rigs, oil pipelines, LPG pipelines, tankers and refineries all around. Strangely handsome and impressive plants line the roads and canals.

There is work and money here. This oil and gas help fuel the USA’s huge appetite for energy. It makes you realise that changing attitudes and habits to consumption, and the development of renewable alternatives in this part of the world is a humungous task. I try not to feel too hopeless about the future of the planet. Anyway, we continued our journey in our 8.1L V8 petrol vehicle, long since resigned to our 9 mpg mileage, and wended our way along the Bolivar Peninsula to our second ferry crossing of this trip. Here the 20min crossing, costing an even more outrageous sum of $0, took us across the 7th busiest shipping lane in the world to Galveston Island. Despite the traffic there are a couple of pods of dolphins that live in this channel and we were treated to a fine display. Double win!

Galveston Island is home to Galveston, a beachside town with 3 piers, a long prom and the usual serving of hotels, restaurants, bars, fast food joints and urban/suburban delights.   It boasts a historic district which we didn’t quite get to and the greatest mini-golf course that we definitely did visit.

Our two nights here were at a beachside camp with a view of the sea from our back window. It was still very hot, 100% humidity and a constant onshore breeze. It was a very pleasant 10 minute cycle down the wide promenade to the nearest pier upon which was situated a restaurant with a sundowner deck.

That was a very agreeable place to spend our first evening.  The next day we found the mini-golf and played both courses. It was a fabulously gimmicky and we won a game each, with exactly level scores over the 36 holes. Still level pegging in the Hampson Trans America Mini Golf Challenge.  After a brief shopping trip by bicycle for necessities (drawing the usual perplexed looks from the car-bound) we beetled home in the shadow of a large dark cloud that was threatening to unload. It didn’t and we spent the afternoon faffing about before we were treated to another fabulous sunset from camp.

The next day we were on the road relatively early (for us) at 9.30am in order to get to the days entertainment: the Houston Space Centre. We left the island by way of a highway and bridge and headed north. The Space Centre was only about 40 mins away and although we arrived only 10 minutes after it opened it was already getting busy with school groups.  The enormity of the carpark indicated how popular this can get as a destination. There are a couple of training jets on poles at the gate, and as you pull up to the main visitor centre building you just can’t miss the life-sized mock-up of a space shuttle piggy-backing the actual transport 747 that used to ferry them about. Pretty amazing.

We started our visit with a tram ride around the Space Centre complex. This took us to the Mission Control building where we were able to see into the training room.

This is set up exactly like the room that flies the International Space Station, but uses simulation to train the operators. It is apparently so life-like that the real operators can’t tell the difference. Next was the building where they build mock-ups of the capsules, vehicles and equipment etc to train the astronauts. There were robots and stuff too.

A big boys (and girls) toys dream world. Finally there were a few old rockets to see and most impressively, a shed containing a real-life Saturn V which was massive. Photo does not do the size of it justice.

Back at the centre we went through the shuttle (surprisingly small) and the 747, and some of the shuttle and moon landing exhibits.  We left before the school children numbers reached critical and thrashed through the traffic laden mega highways of the Houston southern ring road before rush hour even considered starting. By the time we arrived at our roost for the night in Katy we were definitely frazzled. This is the worst side of American road tripping, the overwhelming concrete monsters of highways and the stupid driving that often accompanies them.

Katy is really just an extension of the Houston metro area. This was a single night stay to put us within easy striking distance of a significant destination, College Station. Home of Texas A&M University and the location of our first and likely only college football game.

Bring on the fun!