Tag: Seminole Canyon SP

Finishing Up Our 17 Days Across Texas

Grateful to have the Jeep back, we set off to explore our new surroundings. We started at the park’s visitor center. They have a wonderful museum which explains the history of Seminole Canyon going back 12,000 years. The park contains over 200 pictograph sites. There are ranger guided hikes to several of the canyons and one site is only accessible by private boat. The hikes range from easy to moderately strenuous. Since I’m not one for “moderately strenuous”, Steve and I walked the Maker of Peace Trail around the visitors center.

Bill Worrell created this sculpture as a tribute to the Desert Archaic people. It is their pictographs that adorn the canyon walls.

Once we were done, we headed to the Pecos River High Bridge…

Just like the Amistad Reservoir, the Pecos River is at a near all time low. You can see from my 2022 picture just how narrow the river has gotten in the last 2 years…

We stumbled onto a former RV park managed by the Corps of Engineers. The state park ranger told us it has been closed for over 20 years because of the falling river levels.

The drive to the boat launch did provide several overlooks to the river…

We drove down to the long closed boat ramp which ended almost a 1/4 mile from the edge of the river.

The blue dot is us and I promise, the Jeep was not in the middle of the river!

Across the river, we could see and hear the cows, sheep and goats grazing on the other side. We drove up to the picnic area and walked the nature trail. It doesn’t look like much maintenance has been done in recent years, but there is still signage to identify many of the native plants and a view of where the Pecos River ends at the Rio Grande River…

Unfortunately, you can no longer actually see either river, but some of the wildflowers were already in bloom…

The next day we headed out to the Box Canyon boat launch on the Rio Grande River. This launch was in even worse shape than the Pecos River launch…

But it did provide a great view of the Rio Grande…

Our last day at Seminole Canyon was spent ordering batteries for Waldo and parts for the Jeep. But I did take a walk along the Birding Trail. They have a nice bird blind and the trail is paved…

Before we headed out, I was excited to find my first cactus in bloom…

Fort Stockton was on the way to our next campground. Steve parked Waldo at the Love’s Truck Center to purchase and install the new batteries. He disconnected the Jeep and I headed to the parts store to pick up parts. The battery install went smoothly but the parts run turned into “awww crap” since not all of the parts came in 😦 Still inserting choice words.

Our final stop in Texas was the Saddleback Mountain RV Park in Balmorhea. It is a no frills park for sure, but $20 a night full hook-up sites are a rarity. When we arrived, there were several semis in the gravel lot adjacent to the park. They were transporting windmill blades. It’s hard to fathom how huge they actually are…

The red truck you can see on the left is a full size quad cab pickup. And there is a person in a yellow shirt in the center of the picture. This gives you an idea just how monstrous they are.

The reason for picking this park was its proximity to Balmorhea SP. They are renovating their campground so it is closed right now. The CCC built the park in the 1930’s and it is the world’s largest spring fed swimming pool, described as “a cool oasis in the high desert”…

More than 15 million gallons of water flow through the pool each day, gushing from the San Solomon Springs. The pool is up to 25 feet deep, covers 1.3 acres, and holds 3.5 million gallons of water. The water temperature stays at 72 to 76 degrees year-round. Excerpt from their website.

We didn’t swim, but I couldn’t resist taking off my shoes and letting my feet dangle in the pool…

I imagine, in the heat of summer, this place must be packed!

It was an interesting, sometimes frustrating, mostly wonderful 17 days in Texas. Waldo left, happy with his new batteries and the Jeep is still a bit sad with no 4X4, but happy to be drive-able! Thank you for coming along.

Up Next…Deming, New Mexico

Home of Rockhound State Park

Visiting the Texas Gulf Coast

After leaving Louisiana, we headed for the gulf coast of Texas. There are 8 state parks along the coast and 6 of them have camping. Since we’d already been to Galveston Island SP two times, we decided to check out some of the other parks.

We started with Sea Rim SP in Sabine Pass.

I read reviews (usually) and nearly everyone complained about the nonstop barrage of mosquitoes year round. And, yep!, they are that bad!! But knowing in advance made it much more bearable. A liberal dose of bug spray and a bit of tolerance toned it down to mildly annoying.

The Gambusia Nature Trail Boardwalk is named for the small gambusia fish you will see in the marsh. It has several interpretive signs and covered benches along the .7 mile trail.

We saw plenty gambusia, along with a couple water snakes and some turtles. We only saw one small flock of American Coots. In case you ever wanted to know, a flock of coots is called a commotion! Most people assume coots are ducks but what makes then so different is the fact they do not have webbed feet…

This picture is from the Cornell University "All About Birds" website
This picture is from the Cornell University website “All About Birds”

You can drive along the east and west beaches for miles, with the center section reserved for non-motorized travel. While we did in fact do that, I’ll be darned it I know what I did with the pictures!

We set a day aside to go into Sabine Pass to see the lighthouse (which I believe is technically in Louisiana).

We were getting ready to leave when we saw the Lucky Johnny trawler heading out into the gulf.

Our time at Sea Rim was over much too soon, but that means we’ll just have to go back another time!

Our next stop was Mustang Island SP outside of Corpus Christi. This was a place that had been on my To-Do list for years and I was quite excited about our stay. Unfortunately, my excitement vanished when we arrived. Not because it wasn’t everything I had hoped. But because the transfer case in my Jeep had grenaded somewhere along the way. We now knew what that sound was we had heard 😦 He discovered when the t-case grenaded, it also took out the front drive shaft, ripped out several wires AND put a hole in the fuel line. Oh joy! He did all the repairs he could do at the campground and found a shop at our next stop to complete the job. So….he spent our time there “mechanic-ing” and I read books. I did manage a walk on the beach, but my heart just wasn’t into it but then I found something weird in the surf…

No one seemed to know exactly what is was/is, so I’ve dubbed it my Texas Gulf Coast Alien.

The only other picture I took the entire 4 days was an early spring promise of a beautiful yucca plant flower bud…

Looking back on it, it could have been so much worse. We could have been 5 miles down the beach when it happened or on the highway doing 60 mph. But knowing that did not help how I felt at the time! So,with high hopes of a repaired Jeep, we headed off to Laredo. More about that next time!