We headed for Saguaro National Park opting for the eastern park, Rincon Mountain District. Since we'd be pulling the camper, we thought the park with the paved road would be best for us. The cacti were amazing, such a variety of types, sizes and shapes. We learned that the Saguaro grow very slowly and don't develop arms until they're around 75 years old. They can live to 150 to 200 years under the right conditions and can get as high as 50 feet tall and weigh 8 tons. We saw barrel cactus blooming with yellow flowers, teddy bear cholla, looking anything but teddy bear cuddly, creosote bush, mesquite, and of course prickly pear. It was amazing to see whole hillsides with forests of cacti. We then headed to Phoenix to spend time with my brother, ... read more

What winds we had last night! The whole camper shook and swayed. We must have had gusts over 50 mph. It did not make for a restful night. We stopped at the Brantley Lake SP welcome center on the way out to get advice on which road to take since the winds were supposed to be bad again today. They recommended we head north to Roswell then west on Hwy 70 through Ruidoso, down to Alamagordo and Las Cruces. At Roswell we ate lunch and looked in a couple of the souvenir shops for alien junk. Junk it was. The road from Roswell to Alamogordo was great. It went from desert to Hondo River Valley (still lots of cactus growing up steep hillsides) to the pines of the Lincoln National Forest, with a dusting of ... read more

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MISTY!! The road into Chisos Basin is definitely winding and steep, but so beautiful. The Chisos Basin is set inside the ring of the Chisos Mountain Range which is situated entirely inside the Big Bend National Park. We took the Windows overlook trail and got some great pictures. After leaving the park we got views of the Chisos Mountains from the west. This part of Texas is like so much of the west, wide open and ever-changing. There are mountains of every shape and color: round top mountains, flat top, pointy, rocky, striped (vertically, horizontally and diagonally striped) even polka-dotted mountains. The colors range from yellow to tan to brown, red, blue-black, green. There are vast flat areas with mountains in the distance in any direction you look. It's desert, but surprisingly colorful. There ... read more

We dawdled a bit this morning, but didn't have far to go, just to Del Rio. We stopped at a rest area to use the free wifi and post yesterday's blog, as the wifi at the KOA was having issues. Texas is great, they provide free wifi at their rest areas and welcome centers. We also stopped in Uvalde for groceries. We set up for the night at the Holiday Trav-L Park near Amistad National Recreation Area. Once set up, we went to look at the reservoir and the dam. The border guards said we could go to the middle of the dam, park and take pictures, so we did and got a big kick out taking our pictures straddling the border with one foot in Mexico and one in the USA. The water in ... read more

Last night we ate supper at Cajun Cowboy's. I had shrimp etoufee with fried okra. Kerry decided to try 2 kinds of boudin and fried gulf shrimp. It was pretty tasty, but we both suffered with heartburn at bedtime. It was really cold this morning, around freezing. We stayed pretty warm overnight due to a small heater and down comforters. It sure was hard to get out of bed, especially since we had to turn off the heater to turn on the coffeemaker. We drove through Houston on our way to San Antonio. We lived in Houston for five years and only left there 32 years ago. And yet, nothing looked familiar. Okay, a few street names seemed to ring a long-ago bell, but mostly it was like we had never been there. It is a ... read more