Most of our day driving north through East Texas yesterday was unbearably hot and humid. We took a brief side trip to Shreveport, LA to check out the city (a flaming hot 2 hour sidebar that left us anxious to get the hell out of the "oven" of Texas and Louisiana and head to cooler climates north and east) and then got back on a major route heading toward Arkansas.
When we left Shreveport, the skies had grown dark and ominous and it was clear that a nasty storm was on the horizon. This was good news in a way, because we knew the temperature might break, but it also created the environment for tornadoes, which we definitely preferred not to experience. We toyed with the idea of changing direction to avoid the storms, but a few minutes on my cell phone weather apps told me that there were similar tornado warnings and severe storm warnings basically in all directions, as it was a pretty large front. So we kept to our planned path and just pulled off the road when the thunderstorms got ominous.
No tornadoes materialized where we were and we were grateful for that. The rain and occasional clap of thunder continued for a few hours into the evening, but other than that, we spent an uneventful evening in Texarkana, Arkansas. Today we plan to drive across Arkansas, with a stop in Hope, Arkansas at the birthplace and childhood home of Bill Clinton, which is now a National Historic Site. We will likely be in Memphis, TN by this evening.
The days since my last entry from Marfa, Texas have been very enjoyable. We left Marfa after the music festival and headed to Big Bend National Park for a visit with our good friends, Ranger Rob Dean and his wife Angie. We enjoyed visiting a few of our old haunts in the park and had a great night out on Monday night celebrating Andre's 51st birthday with Rob and Angie in the Terlingua Ghost Town at our old Monday night haunt, The Starlight Theatre.
We spent time driving through some of our old "get-a-way" towns (Alpine, Marathon & Fort Stockton) and I spent some time shopping for a few pair of new jeans in the best place for jeans in Alpine - Johnson's Feed and Western Wear. Yes, you can actually get feed there (we didn't need any), along with ranching gear, farm implements, sturdy western clothing and a great assortment of genuine cowboy and cowgirl boots.
Eventually all of our shopping and re-visiting of old haunts was done and we headed out of West Texas and started East toward Livingston, TX our technical "home town", where we needed to do some banking, renew our inspection sticker on the van and pick up our mail. We camped one night at the Escapees RV Park, our "home base" and also the source of our mailing address and then headed out yesterday mid-day to start our journey out of Texas and back toward New England. Here are just a few photos from our brief visit back to Big Bend NP.
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| Watching Ranger Rob's "Roping" program up at the Chisos Basin in Big Bend |
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| A return to Santa Elena Canyon where the water was quite high |
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