Life after Big Bend

 

We left Big Bend on 12/12 or 13, I forget which, and headed west out of the park. There was much more that I want to see and expect to come back here.

We stopped overnight at Terlingua, TX. Not much there. We did visit the “ghost town” and the old cemetary.  There was an old building converted to a sort of local gift shop. What caught my eye as we drove up was a guy sitting on the porch on a cell phone. He had a red tipped white cane which suggested he was blind but he had a flashlight strapped to the cane. Primary activity here seems to be associated with going to Big Bend or taking off road tours.

From there we moved on to a park south of Alpine, TX. We camped at an elevation of 5,200 feet with a lovely view of the hills. The road down to Alpine offers a lovely view of the little town. Alpine, population 5,700 seemed nice enough. Home to Sul Ross State University. You can see the influence as they have two, count them, two small health food stores.

Spent most of 12/15 at the doctor’s office and lab at the local hospital. The background is that the week before we left Pensacola I did something to my left ankle that caused a burning pain and then swelling. It has persisted in giving me pain. To try and solve this I tried taping the ankle for support and left the tape on about 24 hours while in Big Bend. The day after I took the tape off the front of the ankle became painful and developed a hard knot which looked like a tendon but moved when touched too easily.

Turns out it was a superficial blood clot in a vein and it was caused by the taping. Yes, Gayle is trying to kill me. If anything should happen please have her investigated.

Bad news for Gayle, is that this type of clot is not likely to move and cause more serious problems but may take some time to dissolve.

While in BIBE we found that our realtor was trying to reach us and we now have a contract on the house and they are trying to close before the end of the year. We are currently in the small town of Fort Davis, TX at a state park, Davis Mountain SP. It has been interesting trying to find notaries to get everything signed and shipped back to Pensacola.

At Davis Mountain, Gayle finally got her wish to see wildlife. The local mule deer stand outside and look in at us. The cats don’t seem too interested in them. Guess they don’t move fast enough to interest them.

She also got to see her first Javelina. They are cute little fellows. They tend to be near the campground at dusk and at night and don’t seem too interested in us. The one group we see moving around have a baby in the group.

Yesterday we drove up to the McDonald Observatory and took a tour of the two largest telescopes and attended the solar viewing. Both of which were interesting and worth doing. Last night we attended a star party. It was a little cloudy but clear enough that we got to see some good stuff. This photo is the 107” telescope.

Tomorrow we are probably going to head to Hueco Tanks State Park about 30 miles east of El Paso, TX.

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.