Arkansas - Texas

On March 3rd, we pulled the Foster Train out of the Hot Springs KOA and drove west to Texas. It was both mine and Chris' first time visiting the Lone Star state so we were very excited to see what surprises it held. East Texas was much more forested than we heard most of Texas was, which makes sense obviously the state lines do not determine climate zone. We continued down the highway and saw many American car dealers, a lot of fast food, and soon enough the city of Dallas. It appeared that Texas was where the "American" stereotype was formed...huge fast food portions and huge American-made trucks everywhere. We stopped at a rest stop for gas and it was around 80 degrees outside so I had gym shorts and a t-shirt on and the women working in the store commented about me wearing shorts "already"...80 degrees is pants weather for them, crazy! We continued along through Dallas and into the real desert. While we were driving, I reserved a campsite through hipcamp.com called Ancient Oaks. The reservation came with driving directions instead of an address...that part wasn't too strange, I was used to lat/long coordinates, but these directions used FR and PR...what the heck do those mean? I pulled up Google Maps to check the area and soon found out they stand for Farm Road and Private Road. Ahhh makes sense now. So we followed the Farm Road to the Private Road, past a pond, and up to a campsite on the left. Definitely a secluded area. We got to the site in the early evening and had been seemingly cooking chili in the crock-pot all day while we were driving. I jumped out of the truck and went back to the bed to check if it was finished but unfortunately, the crock-pot heater had tripped the breaker on the inverter. We have since figured out that the starter solenoid, which separates the batteries when the truck is not running, is broken. Therefore, the batteries were not giving power to the inverter. We decided to just cook it on our propane stove so that we'd have something to eat for dinner still. I hesitantly placed the ceramic bowl of the crock-pot on our stove on low-medium heat and it cooked through in 20-30 minutes. Phew. The chuck roast in the chili was chewy but the pot didn't shatter and we had something to eat! Check out the final product to the right. For the rest of the night, I did some yoga and read, and Chris spent every minute he could looking for things to clean until he got tired (he was making our fire and organizing stuff in the photos below).

Both of us oddly had a lot of trouble sleeping at this site so we slept in a little and got a late start on a hike in Dinosaur Valley State Park. This park is where some scientists in the 40s discovered Cretaceous-age dino footprints in preserved limestone. This occurred when some dinosaurs were walking around in the limey mud of the tidal zone of the ocean and created footprints, before the footprints were washed away, some silty material filled the voids and the ocean receded allowing the area to dry and become rock. Through differential weathering and/or freeze-thaw action, the silty material was removed leaving the limestone with footprints tens of millions of years later. I was impressed by the depiction the scientists created from observing the footprints. They knew the types of dinos in the area from the footprints and then could also show what was going on by the estimated speeds at which they were traveling and the spacing of the prints. The main set of discovered prints was created when a long-neck herbivore dino was walking and a smaller carnivorous dino came up behind and attacked. I was amazed that all of this could be depicted from just the footprints. Anyway, back to the hike, we took the dogs out and hiked around this park to see some Texas landscapes and get some exercise. The planned hike was the Cedar Brake Loop Trail which was marked to be 7.1-7.6 miles on online forums and the park map. This was the longest trail in the park and went across a creek bed that was over-flooded at the time due to high rainfall over the past couple weeks. The rangers told us about the flooding so I wore shorts and my Chacos sandals but Chris chose to literally test the waters (and his balance) and wore jeans and Clarks shoes. We got to the first water crossing about 0.25 miles into the hike; Zena and I hoped right through the water using some stable rocks as stepping stones. Chris and Ratchet carefully tiptoed across the rocks surrounded by riffled water, they did very well but Chris still got some wet socks. We continued on up and down a few hills passing many cacti and ducking under dry bushy material. The hike rounded out over 8 miles because it turns out the "loop trail" was not a full loop. The Cedar Brake Loop Trail was 7.6 miles as the map noted but you had to hike further through the park area to get back to your car. Despite this, we both agreed this is one of the best parks for trail markers we have ever been to. Oh and when we crossed the small river the second time Chris just dipped a foot...no major falls or wet jeans that day. It was rainy so I didn't bring my phone on the hike but the photo below is the ranger building/museum in the park, super cool stone work!

After the hike, we set the GPS to Roswell, NM and continued west. This was one of the stops Chris chose and I wasn't opposed to it since it had to do with ...seemed cool. It was going to be about an 8 hour drive so we knew we would have time to make decisions along the way. We passed through a very small town and stopped for gas maybe an hour after we began that leg of the drive. Chris had taken out at least a quarter pound of rosemary almonds and I was hungry so we needed to find some real food. I asked the guy in the convenience store if there are any towns further down the road and he replied that it was pretty empty in that direction...oh grrreat. Glad we filled up on gas! We grabbed some snacks and continued on not expecting much. He was right, it was empty and by the looks of the map it was only going to get more empty. The photo below is some of what we saw during our drive.

We found a Texas fast-food chain called Whataburger and I unhappily agreed we could eat there. It looked like Burger King and Mickey D's combined and made a Texas-friendly baby. Everything down to the floor tile was the same! We ordered some burgers with no buns and without even asking they came with large fries and 32oz drinks. Thanks Texas. So we continued down the road and on to west Texas. Soon enough we were in the desert. We happened upon a few small oil rig pumps and literally thousands of windmills. I had to laugh when Chris kept saying he saw airplane wings sitting on trailers on the side of the highway, I happened to be looking the other direction every time. We later realized his "airplane wings" were actually windmill arms. Too silly. They are some large contraptions though. From what I saw across this road, it seems like Texas is the power-making capitol of America, gotta thank them for that. By the time 5pm or 6pm came, I had not booked us a campsite yet because we were in and out of phone service and the roads were pretty bumpy to work on my laptop. I began searching for KOAs since it was Sunday and they were the most likely to be open still. Turns out Roswell is literally in the middle of nowhere and no one wants to camp there. The most reasonable KOA for us to hit was in Lubbock, TX which was a little over a hour from where we were driving and almost three hours east of Roswell. Luckily they were still open so we made a reservation and made that our new destination. We arrived around 7:45 and they had a worker nice enough to pop back in the office to check us into our site. We got to pick out our site since maybe a total of three people were there. After the trailer was in place we could finally relax, cook a simple dinner, and shower before bed. In the campsite adjacent to ours, we saw a dodge van parked with a young guy moving bikes around the van. He asked if we were in town for the dirt bike race, clearly we were traveling for very different purposes. He was a twenty year old who has been dirt bike racing as a career since he graduated high school at sixteen; this was his first year racing as a full time job. We didn't get to talk for long as it was getting pretty late and windy across the Texan desert. I went to bed as Chris was reading something on his phone. When I woke up I was ready to go see some aliens in Roswell! Turns out Chris had been reading about the site and its history. It is over a hour into the desolate part of the desert, you need 4WD to get there, and all you can observe is a plaque of some other-life quote. In addition to that disappointment, since the original "alien landing" occurred it has been released that the military was doing testing including some crash landings with dummies dressed in silver suits with aluminum bones. I see why the locals in the 40s were thinking aliens, but seems like an unnecessary addition to our trip. Anyway, check out my next post to find out where we went instead.