West of the Pecos

We were away from the heat and congestion of the Rio Grande Valley, and were aiming toward a place we loved, the mountains of west Texas, but still things weren’t right. We seemed to either be traveling to get somewhere, or traveling to get away from somewhere, but not really being anywhere. We had just spent our second night in a row at a Wal-Mart, and we weren’t happy campers. We had fallen asleep with an amazing wind howling around us, actually shaking the trailer. It reminded us of a stormy night we had spent years ago on Brier Island in western Nova Scotia, except for the lack of a fog horn blaring every 45 seconds. But the wind did hide the sound of traffic, and semi’s idling in nearby parts of the lot, so we had a reasonable night’s sleep. In the morning, Dixie and I took a long walk across the huge empty field next to the shopping center, and discovered the handsome gate to the HIDE AWAY Ranch, set back a bit from the road that circled the field. At one time, it was probably well outside the city of Del Rio, but progress, and civilization, and the Wally Mart had slowly crept right up to its front gate. As we were admiring the iron work on the fence, a young guy, wearing a Fed-Ex uniform, but driving an old pick-up truck, drove up and unlocked the gate. He told us a buddy of his owned the ranch. He was going in to feed the animals before work, and wished us a good morning, safe travels, and to enjoy the sunrise.

After a quick breakfast, we got on the road, and headed up to Amistad National Recreation Area. We almost went there the night before, but not knowing what the sites were like, and having to search and decide after dark, we hadn’t traveled the extra distance. At the information center, we learned that normally there would have been a number of quite nice spots to dry camp (no water or power), but most of the spots were taken due to the start of Spring Break. We also realized, as five or six trucks hauling big fancy powerboats rolled in to get their passes, that the majority of people who used this section of the Recreation Area did so on the water, just using the sites for their evening’s rest. Mentally marking this spot as a place to revisit, at a quieter time of year, we got back on route 90 heading west north west, towards Fort Davis. Earlier that morning, anticipating the worst due to the start of Spring Break, I had called ahead and made a reservation at the State Park we had visited eight years ago, and really enjoyed. I dreaded another night of seeing the sun setting as we had no place to stay, so I had booked two nights, so we knew where we would lay our heads for the next evenings. We traveled past Seminole Canyon, and enjoyed and remembered the barren, beautiful landscape of this part of the Chihuahuan Desert. We arrived at the long bridge high over the Pecos River, but Donna was already burnt out from the past several days, and said she didn’t want to stop. I remembered the picnic area high above the river, so unilaterally made the decision to turn around and stop at the rest area. When we got there, Donna made the unilateral decision that, although it was noon here, it was five o’clock somewhere, and the only way she could face the rest of the day was to open a bottle of our old friend, two buck Chuck. They both turned out to be great decisions, as the stop was beautiful, looking down over the green waters of the Pecos River, just before they joined the Rio Grande: and Donna was able to finally shake the funk and depression that had taken hold of her in the heat and endless hours of driving to get to, and then away from, the Texas Tropics. She finally got out her own super dooper camera (rather than using my little stealth one) and was amazed again at the power of twenty optical zoom, and the sophistication of the new Canon. We found a new traveling companion, a tiny bright red folding chair, just waiting for us, looking lost and abandoned in the parking lot. For weeks, we had been looking for a small chair to fit at the table in the trailer, and suddenly, there it was. And it also is incredibly silly in its own right, so Donna decided it would be our “traveling gnome“, and be featured in scenic photos all across the west. We met a couple in a big rig from Michigan, who had been full timing for years and loving it. After fifteen minutes of talking, they mentioned they were from Traverse City. Donna remembered I had a cousin from there, and sure enough, Ara had worked in the health care system, and knew my cousin Kim from her days before she retired. Once again, small world isn’t it. Finally, with one of us well rested, and one of us well lubricated, we got back on the road, and headed west of the Pecos. We resolved that the rest of this trip would be different, we would be more conscious of what we were doing each day, and we would make sure that we made the time to take better care of ourselves, spiritually and physically.

We crossed over the river, and were again amazed at how formidable an obstacle this must have been to people heading west. As the west was being opened, all the mail and stage routes traveled north of here, through Ft. Davis and Van Horn, on their way to El Paso, and points west. For sixty miles , high cliffs line both banks of the river canyon. The railways were the first to successfully establish a permanent crossing this far south. The 1880’s saw the silver spike being driven in Dead Man’s Gulch, just west of here, that marked the completion of the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Route, that joined San Francisco and New Orleans in a southern transcontinental rail route. However it wasn’t until 1891 that the Southern Pacific Railroad built the first high bridge across the Pecos, making the route safe from the flood waters of this large river. In 1923, the first highway bridge was built near here, just fifty feet above the river. It was destroyed by floods in 1953, and two subsequent bridges were built, and then washed out, in 1954 and 1955. Realizing their foolishness, the bridge we traveled on was completed in 1957, spans a distance of 1310 feet, and at a height of 273 feet above the water‘s surface, is the highest highway bridge in Texas. The 1880’s also saw the rise of a famous character in Texas and western lore: Judge Roy Bean. The railway construction camps, and small towns that sprung up just north of the Mexican border, were lawless and wild. The Texas Rangers did what they could, but without a judicial system closer than Fort Stockton, 100 miles away, they were somewhat powerless. So in 1882, they appointed Roy Bean to be the first Justice of the Peace for Pecos County. He presided in a building he called the Jersey Lilly, named after the English actress Lillie Langtry. It was a combination courthouse, saloon, and pool hall. He was famous for changing hats at a moments notice, often appointing his jury from patrons in the saloon. His justice was reportedly swift, practical, and fair. He was the only “Law west of the Pecos,” at a time when his brand of justice was both crucial and legendary. We passed through Langtry, where he held court and established an “Opera House” in his home, (hoping to entice Ms. Langtry to grace their town with her presence), and realized that a century later there was another new law west of the Pecos: Enjoy every day, as fully as we can, whatever it takes… “Carpe Diem.”

Just after Pumpville and before Dryden, two towns marked on the map and in reality just a few abandoned buildings, we slowly caught up to an amazing freight train heading west on this famous length of the Southern Pacific. It was a twenty first century train on a nineteenth century line, made up of forty foot shipping containers stacked two high on the rolling flatcars. At the end we first caught up to, there was a beautiful yellow diesel engine, linked up backwards, instead of a caboose, and then the two-high container cars stretched into the distance farther than we could see. Donna had a great time, as we passed relatively slowly this rolling mass of goods, fascinated by the variety of colors and logos and combinations of adjacent containers, that became an abstract pallet for her camera’s eye. Eventually we approached the front, and saw four more huge diesel engines hooked together, pulling this enormous load at about 40 miles per hour. I slowed to that speed so Donna had time to play with the composition and camera, and we were rewarded with several long blasts of the train’s air horns as the engineer waved hello. Farther up the road, we stopped in Sanderson for old times sake, and the train passed us by, so we had a another chance to marvel at the length of this freight train. As we later passed it a second time, I counted the number of cars, as the varying colors made it easy to count in groups of five, marking your position by whatever unique combination was thirty five, then forty, then forty five. All in all, there were 133 cars, most of them stacked two high. Since they held a forty foot container, plus a few feet at each end, plus the coupling, each one must have been at least 50 feet long. So 133 times 50, plus 5 engines, means that train was at least 7000 feet long, or almost a mile and half of rolling stock, all being pulled by four engines. It was wonderful to behold, and also made so much more sense on many levels than a line of 265 tractor trailers moving down the highway. So why has Canada torn up so much of its tracks, when so many other countries are modernizing and upgrading theirs, I’ll never figure out.

Back in Sanderson, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, we slowly went up and down the main drag twice, remembering and reliving the time spent here on our last trip. We had passed the night in a parking area next to a young artist’s workshop/warehouse on Main Street, and had flour tortillas, hand made then delivered to us by a Mexican woman living back in one of the residential neighborhoods. Back then, it was a sleepy little town with three gas stations, a few restaurants, a high school, a post office, and local businesses hanging on as best as they could. It was peaceful, and charming, and one could imagine slowing to almost a stop, and living here quietly for a while. Now, eight years later, it was a little slower and more forlorn, a few more businesses had closed, and the beautiful old building that once held a grand department store was still for sale, as was the cutest of the handful of motels. Once again, we thought, another trip, another lifetime, maybe a month or two here would cool our jets, but today we rolled on west.

After crossing another 50 miles of nothing but Texas, some ranches, lots of fences, a few oil rigs, a number of the ever present Border Patrol vehicles, we passed through Marathon, the town on the intersection of the highway and the spur road down to Big Bend National Park. Everyone going to the main areas in Big Bend has to pass through this town, but if anything, the years that had passed since our last trip were harder on Marathon than Sanderson. More places were closed or for sale, and the little town that almost seemed flourishing with the tourist trade back then, seemed dying or struggling at best. The bakery was closed for the day, a few of the higher end tourists spots remained open, but a lot of places were locked for good. We did Big Bend on our last trip, so we continued on the last stretch towards Alpine, the home of a fairly large university, and the main city in this part of Texas. Alpine looked much the same as we rolled on through. The University seemed to have more buildings, all of the businesses and motels and RV parks were still up and running, and it seemed like the same place we had enjoyed visiting last trip. But it was after 4, and we knew the sooner we got to Fort Davis and the State park, the more choices (if any) we would have of campsites.

We pulled in, spoke to the folks at the desk a bit, and were told of three sites still open. When we cruised around to look at them, we found two more that seemed open, and were more to our liking. We hurried back, and sure enough, number 45, at the end of a loop, and all by itself under a shady live oak, was available, and soon had our name on it. We backed in, unhooked, plugged in, heaved a large sigh of relief, and thanked the gods of the roads that once again had saved this perfect spot for us to stop for a day or three. So all’s well that ends well. We were safe and sound and West of the Pecos, in more ways than one.