After a crazy drive through some of the the MOST boring landscape (read west Texas), yet scary due to construction zones, giant trucks and just crazily sloped roads, we made it to Davis Mountain State Park. Again, middle of nowhere. And the weirdest part for me, Californian that I am, there are no places to stop for 100+miles at a time. They occasionally have “picnic areas” that have tables, maybe with a shade structure, but no toilets at all. Hundreds of miles. OK, I also can use the green latrine, and I get the desert plants want all the “water” they can get, but sometimes people have to poop. Where are THEY going? This state has so few restroom facilities!! Even in the 70s and 80s going down Highway 5 in Ca, there were gas stations or some food place about every hour. De nada here. And then as you move around the small “freeways” here between towns, no facilities. Do Texans just not poop??!
The campground at Davis Mountains State Park was pretty nice with electricity and water but the sites were a little close together. And the picnic tables and fire pits are all on the wrong side of the rigs. We could pull in and use extension cords but the trailers cannot do that. They are stuck. It had an interpretive house where they had bird feeders out and identifications and little history about the CCC which made the campground in the 1930s. And the bathroom was quite a distance away at the day use area. The other funny thing about the day use area was that they had this HUGE BBQ with a roll top and everything. Texans do appear to like their BBQ! Plus, there were four White Tailed deer that came around the campground in the evening.
Pretty close to the campground was historic Fort Davis so we went to see that one day. It is nicely preserved and originally protected the 600 mile route between San Antonio and El Paso, but quickly became a staging ground for the campaign to remove the Native tribes from the region. That was the sad/bad part of the history lesson and I thought they did a pretty good job of accepting responsibility for the terrible things done to the regional tribes. The good thing about this fort is that it also hosted the “buffalo soldiers” of the 9th and 10th cavalry- all black regiments. They got their title of “Buffalo” soldiers from the local Apache tribes as a sign of respect for how good they were. The reason I feel this is a good part of the fort is that all of the soldiers were taught reading, math and business skills at the fort so when they were released, they could make a living. It was one of the few places were they were treated almost fairly. At one time it also claimed the best medical hospital of the armed forces. That has been well restored and looks pretty good.
We decided to drive around the Texas Mountain Trail after that and Dave saw Desert Bighorn sheep right on the side of the road! That was cool. Then we found the McDonald Observatory which is based mostly out of UT Austin but has affiliations around the world. That was pretty special to see. They have the second largest telescope in the US. So this “break” between Big Bend and Carlsbad turned out to be pretty good.
