April 27 to April 28, 2010

Oops! I lost the link to the pics for a couple of days. I created a link for each of our albums so you don't have to work so hard to see the pics. Charlie wrote some of the captions and I wrote some....

Tuesday – April 27, 2010, continued
We drove from our campsite in Marathon back 30 miles to Alpine to get groceries. Charlie really liked their small store and bought himself a souvenir, a cloth bag with Porter's Thriftway logo on it. We headed back to Marathon and then south on 385. We drove about 70 miles into Big Bend and took a quick look at the Visitors Center. We were told that there is only one campground in the National Park with hookups, and only seven spots left. So we drove on for twenty miles hoping we would get a space at the Rio Grande camp. We got lucky, but maybe not so lucky. Charlie is unhappy in the extreme. It isn't what we would consider a campground. It is a parking lot with numbered spaces and hookups. There is green space behind each site, but today it happens to be flooded. The picnic tables and grills are in a big swampy puddle. Mostly there are big rigs here and they are managing just fine. But we have all these crates and coolers and really need some outdoor space. So we have to stay on the pavement between the camper and the van, which is also the only shady spot. We ate there and then washed dishes out of a spigot behind the camper, while all the rich people stared at us during their evening walk. At least that is what it seemed like. We don't have a view from where we are, and there are no facilities nearby. We have never paid so much for so little, $30 for the night. We didn't realize how it would be until we had paid and we had come too far too late to do anything else. It is just so unexpected for a national park with such wide open space to have such poor RV campsites. We do have wifi though! We had hoped to leave the trailer here and to drive around tomorrow, but we are going to have to find another place.

Wednesday – April 28, 2010
We headed back to the Visitor's Center this morning and I got a couple of magnets and some other stuff. I cannot seem to only buy one magnet at each place anymore. They are so small and don't cost much.... We went west on FM 170. I have been waiting to travel on an FM road again. Charlie asked, and Jeanne told us, that FM means it is a Farm to Market road. Charlie wanted to know: “What if we wanted to go to market but ended up at the farm instead?” Jeanne supposed you would be back home. I guess you had to be there.....We stopped at a couple of overlooks including Boquillas, and we got pictures of the Rio Grande as we headed west out of the park. It was very shallow, less than 2 feet deep and we saw someone on horseback cross the river from Mexico. It could have been an illegal maneuver. We ate lunch at the Rio Bravo, a tiny restaurant with a big porch. We ate on the porch while Joey laid on his blanket next to us. It was a good meal, mexican, but a little different than we have had before. We drove a little ways west to a ghost town called Terlingua. It isn't llke the stereotypical ghost town you see on tv. It seemed like over half the dwellings that still stood were occupied and should be condemned. Not exactly a ghost town but interesting. There is a nice gift store. We had to take turns going inside because Joey was not allowed and it was very hot. We both bought stuff. I would like to go back when it is not so hot and I can take my time looking around. Now we are camped at the Big Bend Motel and RV Park which is between the national and state Big Bend parks, about 45 miles from where we were yesterday. What a difference. We are in the pop-up section of the park, and we are the only ones here. So we have over an acre of space to ourselves including facilities. But, it costs $2 for 5 minutes in the shower. I take a lot longer than 5 minutes, but that is okay, I have lots of quarters. There is a laundry here too, so I may do that if we stay a day or two. It was very hot when we got here and so we took a siesta. Our little A/C could not really keep up and we could feel the heat radiating through the walls and ceiling. It must have been over 100 degrees here today. Joey seemed perfectly comfortable, so that was good. There is a gas at $3.209 which is better than in the park by 20 cents or so. The gas at Walmart in Del Rio was $2.649, and after that every place was higher. We paid $3.299 in Marathon and the next day in Alpine one station was $2.949. It would have taken 2 more gallons to make it. Charlie feels our safe range is 250 miles pulling the trailer and it has been over 70 miles between stations sometimes. Gasbuddy.com doesn't list the stations in this part of the world, but on their color coded map, it shows the average gas price in the $2.75 range. We are going to leave the trailer here for the day tomorrow while we tour the park.