We departed Brantley Lake after being awakened by a spectacular sunrise at 6:25 AM MST. We drove south on FH 285 through a bit of NM before entering Texas. There is absolutely no indication of the fact you have crossed a state line or a time zone boundary; no signs, lines across the road, agriculture checkpoints.
There were abundant field oil facilities – burning stacks, well pumps, pipelines, oilfield equipment and trucks everywhere despite it being Sunday. Oil profits wait on nothing.
We initially thought we would drive from Carlsbad, NM to Fort Stockton, TX, a distance of some 175 miles or so. Peg attempted to make a reservation in an RV park in Fort Stockton but apparently they only answer the phone during certain hours of the day and one of those hours wasn’t when we called. Peg left a nice message on their answering machine leaving her phone number. A lady at the park finally called back but only after we had fueled in Fort Stockton and were heading east since she had not called while we were inbound.
We knew the next available park was in Junction, TX, some 180 miles east. Without much discussion we took off going east on I-10 through West Texas. It was not as miserable as I thought it would be but it still is a bleak world. They do have a very reasonable speed limit of 80 mph and the road surface is fair or better but what I thought would be flat is actually quite rumpled up terrain with lots of relatively short up & down sections. We also crossed a time zone boundary so we pulled into Junction North Llano River RV Park after 4:00 PM CST.
The park is pretty nice with pull-throughs and full hookups, CATV and very slow wi-fi. No streaming video here. The park is also not a member of any of our park organizations so we noted it was a Good Sam site & we got 10% off the rate of $38.
Long drive today since I’m chicken and only traveled at 65 to 70 despite the reasonable speed limit. However, tomorrow we go to a park near San Antonio and the drive will be short – maybe 2 hours.