Last night (actually, early this morning) we popped out of bed to witness what was touted as a Blood Moon Blue Moon Eclipse. I don’t know why it is called a “blood” moon because it was not red. Apparently, a “blue” moon is the second full moon in a calendar month but it was plain there was an eclipse in progress because the full moon we had seen earlier in the night was a little crescent at 0500 hours. Not too many hours later, we were on our way south with the Barbarian Invader in tow.
US-285 runs from Carlsbad, N.M., to Fort Stockton, TX, and we drove this road when we passed through this area in 2015. At that time, the road was virtually abandoned and we made the long, lonely drive without seeing many vehicles, people or structures. We made the same drive today and there was nasty traffic, construction, congestion and a road surface that appears to have been graded with 500 pound bombs. There are potholes sufficiently large to swallow even the 18 inch tires on our beloved Charlotte. We crossed back into the Central Time Zone despite driving directly south.
Apparently, the refinery that used to be next to US-285 in Orla, TX, blew up in a glorious explosion in December 2015. There are dozens of cranes and extensive personnel housing now strewn across the ugly, flat landscape as a new refinery is being built. Oil industry equipment and trucks are massive and hauling them around on one of the only public roads in the area has resulted in the almost complete destruction of the highway. They also think dust control is for sissies and entire valleys of west Texas are shrouded in gigantic clouds of opaque and pervasive dust raised by all the rednecks and oil field hands scurrying about. It is ugly.
We finally passed through the construction (or lack of construction because we didn’t see too many workers fixing the cratered road) and arrived in the town of Pecos, legendary home to cowboy stuff. There are absolutely no cowboys around Pecos now. Pecos is now a oil industry supply point and it is quite plain who is in charge. The city streets are extremely lumpy, welding and pipeline vendors occupy most of the ugly, ramshackle buildings, all of the pickup trucks (white, of course) have welding machines in the bed and there is a thick layer of dust on all stationary objects.
South of I-20, we departed from the hellish Pecos and broke out on good paving for the remaining 75 miles to Fort Stockton. Other than west Texas scrub brush, the stench of crude oil and distant gas flares squirting flames into the sky, there is very little in the way of improvements or people in this part of the world.
In Fort Stockton, we pulled into the Roadrunner RV Park which is a big ugly vacant gravel and dirt lot with places to hook up to utilities nailed to telephone poles. We will be leaving in the morning to continue our trek south to Big Bend National Park down on the Texas/Mexico border. With our discount card at Roadrunner it is only $12 a night which is about right considering the miserable landscaping but their wifi works. I’m surprised there is wifi here because the locals don’t appear to be computer or English literate. However, I did spot some folks with natural teeth.
There’s pix. Click here