Balmorhea

We did spend one night in New Mexico at an RV park in Deming but our intent was to get to Texas. Mostly because we really like it (that might be more me talking then J/Kat) but also because when last in Texas we found that the state sold annual park passes to cover entrance fees and they included some discount coupons for overnight camping. We knew we might not get our monies worth the last trip but we decided to take a chance. This trip we have made up the cost of our pass and then some.

But before we did we almost got blown off the road in Van Horn TX. The wind was strong enough to make it tiring to drive so we pulled into a Wal-Mart. It was also a long way to anything else because, “well, it’s just is a long way to anything else in west Texas”. The security guy met us and told us where to park and to go ahead and put down your jacks and put out the slides. It’s a nice feeling to be greeted like that. One of the reasons we spend a lot of our money at Wal-Mart. I think we guessed we spend more than half of any money we spend at grocery, hardware, or so called ‘dry goods’ stores at Wal-Mart. They also have lots of parking and of course most everything we need including an RV section and good prices. It’s enough to say as RV’ers we like it and we occasionally spend a night! So J/Kat shopped and I didn’t.

The next day in sunny calm weather we made it to Balmorhea. Its claim to fame is a huge swimming pool built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in the 1930’s. It goes from 3’ to about 30’ deep and is fed by a warm spring which keeps the water a constant 70 something degrees. Very nice and it may have been sunny and calm but I didn’t say warm, so we didn’t do any swimming. Besides that it had lots of fish that nibbled at fingers and I didn’t want to be the only person in the water available for nibbling. There were some scuba divers testing equipment or something. According to the Ranger they do use the pool for scuba classes and diver certification quite a bit.

So we’re back where we belong in the winter making a good case that we are not your typical “snow birds” but rather “winter Texans”.