It was almost noon when we left Houston and I kept the car moving as we had a seven hour drive ahead of us. Isy was surprised though, asking if I was actually going to skip every skatepark and county courthouse today. We needed to get to the campground, but she insisted that 20 minutes wasn't going to make that big of a difference - especially with how happy it would make me to stop at a courthouse or some ruins out here in Texas Hill Country. |
She said this right as we were pulling into the county seat of Uvalde, so for comedic effect I played it up as if she was so right that we needed to immediately make a right-hand turn. I suppose she was completely correct in that we'd be covering over 18 hours of driving in Texas on this trip...and only stopping at two county courthouses? Preposterous! This needed to be remedied and it started here in Uvalde. The Uvalde County Courthouse was built in 1928 in a neoclassical style. None of the four previous courthouses remain standing. |
Isy was off checking out an antique store, while I took the opportunity to further explore the town square and look for any strange birds or plants. I excitedly found a White-Winged Dove, which is pretty easy to find in Texas but a lot harder to find in Newfoundland. Creeping around the trees and lawn of the town square while trying to bird, I was aware of a Mom with two young children nearby. I didn't want to sketch them out, so I took a wide circle, while also trying my best to make it apparent that I was birdwatching. Now, I know how corny it is to insert yourself into a tragedy just because of some minor personal tie in, but I couldn't help but think of those kids a month later, when America's third deadliest school shooting happened in Uvalde, taking the lives of 21 people. 19 of those people were fourth graders and both of those kids looked around the right size for fourth grade. It really could have been one or both of those kids from the town square that day. There are three elementary schools in the 15,000-person town of Uvalde. |
Uvalde was your normal, run-of-the-mill stop on this day, so we moved along just like after tens of other uneventful county courthouse visits. Further up the road we neared the Amistad National Recreation Area, where I had considered camping, but it just wasn't far enough across Texas to set us up for success tomorrow. This worked out though, as we came around a curve in the recreation area and saw the biggest, girthiest snake slithering across the highway. It had to be as thick as a pop can and six or seven feet long. I could have continued with my comedic abrupt right-hand turns into the campground here, but I myself was happy that we were not bunking with that reptile. The next actual stop was the viewpoint for the Pecos River High Bridge. |
In addition to the fantastic view of the Pecos River High Bridge, I noticed that down below was an old platform from a previous iteration of this rest area. I hopped down for an even better view of the Pecos River and a distant view of Mexico at the end of the canyon. |
There was still another hour of driving to go, but we were now into my beloved empty West Texas and I felt a warm joy wash over my body. We were forced to make it to Sanderson if we weren't going to camp at the recreation area and that was fine with me. Even 30 miles out, I smiled at the bleak scenery and empty land all around us. I truly feel alive when I can look out as far as my eyes can manage, with no trees, mountains or oceans hiding any secrets or preventing me from figuring out what's out there. Pulling into Sanderson, there was a budget motel that didn't look the greatest, a B&B, and an old motel that had been bought recently and Instagrammed up to the point it was $175 USD/night. Easily choosing to skip those options, we stayed right in the heart of Sanderson at the Canyons RV Park - home to a square of astroturf for the "tent sites". |
We were a little on edge because we were the only people tenting and there were all these RVs, but we didn't end up seeing any of the RVers out and about. This left us with the gazebo all to ourselves to read into the night. At one point I told Isy how I'd sort of like to see a tarantula from afar. The reply came, "they have tarantulas out here...wait, y'know my father used to lie to my mother about some of the critters in Guadeloupe." I picked up what she was putting down and since I was reading a book about Newfoundland kayak routes, I responded "got it, no tarantulas out here a'tall b'y." A little while later, Isy let me have her sleeping mat for the night since I was the one driving and my rest was more important. And here I was just trying to save the $25/day extra driver fee on the rental! Haha. |
I rushed to grab my camera out of the car in the morning at the sight of this Vermillion Flycatcher perched on the metal, tent site triceratops. |
Going into this trip, I was focused on sleeping in the right place in West Texas as I'd only slept in Del Rio and Van Horn previously, and I really wanted to get it right. I knew we needed to make it to somewhere around Marathon, which had me looking into a comparison of Sanderson vs Marathon. I found some unhinged rant about Sanderson and it almost made me go with Marathon, but in the end, you could find an unhinged rant about anywhere (say Corner Brook, from say, a local blogger) and it may be only one person's experience there. Sanderson was actually perfect in my eyes. It had its heyday and with the loss of ranches, the loss of mandatory stopovers for train workers in Sanderson and I-10's construction an hour north, it's now a place trying to figure out what to do with itself as sleepy remains line the main street. It was on that sleepy main street that we would see a car pass every minute or two. It was quiet and desolate and that West Texas experience I love. |
Isy and I were out for a short walkabout this morning and while she noticed a building selling lawn ornaments and other junk, I noticed these ruins down the side street. This building looks completely the same in the 2008 Google StreetView, so your guess is as good as mine as to what it once was. |
I couldn't exactly go up to the second floor to investigate either. Well, I mean I could have walked those beams, so it's more that I chose not to go up to the second floor. I didn't even spend much time inside on the first floor anyway, as a woodpecker landed on a hydro pole outside and I rushed out to try (and fail) to get a picture. |
The place selling lawn ornaments? They were selling A LOT of lawn ornaments. Isy said we'd have so much stuff in our yard if we lived nearby and it was officially the one time in my life that I was thankful to live in Corner Brook instead of Sanderson Texas. This is the Z-Bar Trading Company, which if you go inside has everything from electrical outlets to Christmas decorations. It's one of those types of stores. I would have loved to go in just to check out the building, but unfortunately it was closed at this hour of the morning. |
After mistaking Sanderson's masonic temple-turned-home for the county courthouse, we eventually correctly identified the Terrell County Courthouse a couple of streets back from main street. This courthouse was built in 1906 in the Richardson Romanesque style, but a renovation in 1930 changed the style to Mediterranean. A fun fact here is that Sanderson is the most isolated county seat in Texas as the nearest county seat is 65 miles (104km) away in Fort Stockton. Maybe that's not such a fun fact for a guy who loves visiting county courthouses in Texas. |
Our route today brought us through Marathon anyway, so it was fun to size up what could have been. They did have a neat old hotel, but we had already splurged on accommodations back in Mobile. We grabbed coffee and a breakfast sandwich in Marathon and milled about for a few minutes. It was clearly more vibrant and trendy than Sanderson, with enough people grabbing breakfast or shopping that I wondered where they all came from. Marathon was cool enough and I wouldn't have minded ending up here last night, but Sanderson was much more my speed and I was satisfied with making the right call. I skipped buying a tarantula plate and instead bought a lengthy tome about one family's history in Texas, before saying adios to Marathon and heading south. |
