Del Rio

Del Rio Texas reminds me of Key West. Which on the face of it makes no sense at all, a desert town filled with spiky plants and dust, on the border with Mexico and loaded with 35,000 residents. What about this place could possibly resemble Key West? Let's see...

First: Del Rio is 150 miles from San Antonio, a long dreary drive, far drearier than the Overseas Highway actually because in the Keys you have  a slow drive but one filled with spectacular views while a driving escape from Del Rio is truly a desert experience. 

So Del Rio is isolated. It is sustained by the US Air Force which has been training pilots at Lauchlin AFB since World War Two, just as pilots train at Boca Chica AFB. 

Del Rio has two Walmarts where Key West famously is closer to Cuba than to Walmart. Del Rio is a frontier town just like Key West, and yet just like Key West you wouldn't know it. Indeed Key West makes more of its tenuous connection to Cuba, the Forbidden Isle, than Del Rio makes of its close connection to Ciudad Acuña, a city of a quarter of a million inhabitants. Drive across the bridge to Mexico and car repairs, tooth repairs and eyeglasses cost a fraction of what they do in Texas. In Key West as we all know everything costs more by virtue of ...it being Key West.

Del Rio is not a tourist town though it does boast of having once won the title for "friendliest border town." If they have a Tourist Development Council I saw no evidence for one. A neighbor in the campground asked if there were any boat rental opportunities on Lake Amistad. No idea is all I can say to that. I never saw one thing advertised as a tourist attraction or activity. Perhaps I wasn't looking.

Del Rio has every facility a traveler could want and campers who have shopped at the HEB grocery say it is as good as any they have seen. Car washes? Mechanics? Car dealers? Restaurants? Every national chain you have heard of is lined up on Highway 90 into Del Rio, far in excess of anything Key West can offer on North Roosevelt Boulevard. 

The sprawl of name brand box stores and fast food restaurants lines a five lane highway, two lanes in each direction and a turn lane in the middle and it goes for miles. It is overwhelming.

Del Rio, as one frequent visitor put it to me is a government town. There are more than 5,000 military here that help run the base to train pilots. Border control is obviously a huge issue and even though we haven't seen any there must be agents all over the place. Tourists come by but they aren't a mainstay.

I have no idea what Del Rio's relationship with Ciudad Acuña is across the river but on the face of it, it is peculiar. There are no signs to Mexico, not one single sign I could see anywhere mentioning the Other Side. I knew where to go thanks to Google which I asked to direct me to the "Port of Entry - Del Rio" so I followed the blue line through deteriorating neighborhoods.

"Isn't it weird" Layne said as we approached the entrance to the bridge,"how every border crossing looks the same." And she's right, we've been through a few and they look like this:

Except this one never once mentioned Mexico. Take a look. We turned off as we want to enter Mexico from Arizona after we stop in Tucson next week.

We drove the wall for a while, here set back from the border which runs through the middle of the river. We curved back into Del Rio and wondered why the other side seems so far away to us simple visitors.

The city of Del Rio is more or less diamond shaped and the southern tip of the diamond touches the bridge. The broad part of the city is filled with residential streets, some not so wealthy. You don't have to cross the bridge to see poverty.

We did see a brown street sign pointing to the historic downtown and there we parked and walked. I saw an old town filled with potential but still ticking along. The main drag was filled oddly with pawn shops and gyms, oddly paired with lovely old facades and curiously mid 20th century buildings. I don't know where they would find the money but of they did this city could really be brilliant. Some pictures:

On May 3rd 1635 a group of Spanish missionaries arrived on the bank of a river and called their mission San Felipe Del Rio (St Philip of the River) as that date is the feast day of St Philip the Apostle. The locals took exception to the mission and destroyed it but the settlement persevered even into the absorption of this area into the Republic of Texas and eventually into the United States.

Val Verde County's seat was established in San Felipe Del Rio but the postal service in 1883 wanted to shorten the name to avoid confusion with another nearby town called San Felipe de Austin so it became Del Rio and so it has remained. Oddly enough I saw school buses driving around town labeled San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District whose superintendent it turns out is called Carlos Rios.

19th century Methodists got themselves a rather fancy church which I thought from a distance must be a Roman Catholic basilica (above), but it's not. The other church I noticed was the Lutheran pile down the street:

These impressive structures hint at the importance of this little town in decades past. Interesting the historical marker barely visible above down't talk about the church but about the man who came from Italy to build stone structures in the US. John Taini born near Brescia in 1854 was recruited to work in New York, then he worked with the railroads and finally with the US army in Texas where he ended up in Del Rio which had a sizable Italian community. I joked with Layne how so many immigrants come and settle and leave their mark and here I am flitting about like a butterfly. His name is everywhere and he died a respected member of the town and appreciated contributor to its civic pride.

I came to Del Rio 40 years ago as I wanted to meander along the border on my Vespa as I explored the United States. I had never seen. first world and a third world country co-exist side by side and I wondered how that would be. I met the Sheriff of Del Rio at the time a man who opened my eyes to the difficulty of life along a border river. He told me of Mexicans who swam (or possibly waded!) across the big river -Rio Grande- and broke into his truck while he was fishing. He couldn't follow them across so he devised a cunning plan. He put a rattlesnake in box and left it in his truck. The box disappeared and no one messed with his truck after that he said. That story has stayed in my mind ever since but I was a callow youth and I remember nothing else of Del Rio. I crossed the border later at Presidio and rode my Vespa to Guadalajara to see a girl I'd met in Paris. A long and different story. Me on the Tropic of Cancer in Mexico 1981:

It's a healthy reminder that the world changes as time passes and the changes change us too. Back then I bumbled around looking and yet I'm not sure I saw, certainly not the way I do now. To be riding ina. van, to have time and to be wise enough to take time to look around keeps the 23 year old inside me alive.

To walk with Layne and Rusty, to size things up and remember them, to share the memories later, all adds up to a richer and more firmly imprinted memory. I'd never have recalled Del Rio the way I see it now. But the curiosity that drove me in 1981 still drives me in 2021, and I am glad of that. And glad of them too.

Gannet 2 is our home and last night as we sat down to dinner aboard (spicy mushroom and kimchi rice bowl with spinach)Layne looked at me and said:"Are you having fun?" and I realized I must be very bad at expressing myself because I don't think I've been happier in a long time. That I never have to go back to work, that only illness death or mechanical ruin stands between us and travel so unconstrained seems like an undeserved privilege. I intend to take full advantage of it. I hope you can get something of value from it. The world is here for you too.

Texas Hill Country To The Border

After the unexpected tour of the Lyndon Johnson ranch we arrived in Fredericksburg around noon on Sunday and we were not impressed. It was our fault partly. A sunny Sunday in the holiday season and the sidewalks were packed? Amazing! It looked like Duval Street during Fantasy Fest (except everyone looked respectably dressed) and it was clear taking. Rusty stroll and window shopping was not going to be relaxing and enjoyable. I hope the good people found their stocking stuffers.

I had been looking forward to Fredericksburg as an unusual outpost of Germanic culture but what I found was a four lane highway driving through downtown with all the intimacy of a freeway. Sidewalks crowded and fast cars pushed us to get on with it.

I think Layne nailed it when she said we need to come back in Spring for wildflowers which are said to be astonishing, or Fall after schools get busy and devote some time to the area. Part of this journey is exploration and we are taking notes on places we want to see next time around.

I was surprised by a couple of things about the bits we did see of Hill Country, and that was the total absence of billboards on the highways, no neon advertising and not much of anything between towns. Someone has been taking care of the tourist attractions here because the roads are broad and smooth and the towns are focused on local business and local stores. Clearly this is a valued attraction for Texans and I felt lucky to get a small look in on the place.

Outside Fredericksburg we were driving southwest to a distant point on the Rio Grande about three hours away. I don't know if the countryside was technically desert because there are tons of scrubby little trees that look like live oaks to my mediterranean mind. Without doubt it was deserted.

Texas is not a popular RV destination for people looking for deserted boondocks, informal camping on broad swathes of public land, minimal impact no facilities, open skies and all that back to the wilderness stuff. There is no Bureau of Land Management land in Texas and National Forests are sparse and small so most of the time the highways through all this open space look like fenced in luge tracks, we were in a sled sliding past a whole lot of nothing but unable to get off the road. Until we could.

It was where Interstate 10 crossed our highway and there we found an old roadside stop that had seen better days. Not too scenic but it was unfenced which worked for us, and for Rusty.

I don't know when Texas last saw regular gas at $1:45 but this place looked like it had been shut down for a while. I don't suppose the arrival of the freeway helped.

Layne heated our savory kolache buns from Austin while Rusty wandered around being a dog. We had a decent Verizon signal much to our surprise so we weren't as lost as we felt. That changed.

The road went on and on shedding miles and cell phone strength as we went. The gas gauge said we had 109 miles of gas but Del Rio was 139 miles away. The numbers did not add up. "Well," I said, "We are bound to find a gas station somewhere." Layne stayed silent. The little blue dot kept tracking our progress and I was reminded we had paper charts in the attic, a shelf above our heads.

We did find gas eventually at a highway intersection. We stopped and looked. "That's going to be horribly expensive," I said. It was a run down convenience store surrounded by All Terrain Vehicles and men grouped in camouflage hunting clothes  looking very butch. In my own head I could see myself showing up in great big box with my goofy accent, a pansy mask and a dog more at home in a salon than out tearing out the throat of a wild boar. "I'll bet that place is full of Omicron Covid," I tried playing my ace. All I could see was me being strung up by my knackers and getting slow smoked for dinner by hunters who had suffered a fruitless hunt. I couldn't see any dead game draped artfully across their machines. "If you're sure we'll find gas," my wife said. Say no more, I put the poofy van in gear and we continued rolling like the pioneers of the wild frontier we fancied ourselves to be, Conestoga prairie schooner catching the wind as we went. Yea-haa!

I found a Shell station when the gauge showed 20 miles to empty. Layne had discovered in Rocksprings, a cell phone oasis, that gas in Del Rio costs $2:56 a gallon. That was fatal. We loaded up with the bare minimum at $3:10 a gallon and set off full of optimism. The road did not get more inhabited. It went on and on like this:

Or this:

Google sent us left when we had no signal so I stopped and pulled out Mr Rand McNally's great paper invention. I flipped the pages and founds on the paper. I made an executive decision. "We are not turning left," I said with authority. Rusty was reluctant to get back aboard the capsule, the life support system in this wilderness.

The fences around here are huge and I couldn't make up my mind if they were to keep deer out or in, or to keep lost Mexican migrants out or what. We drove for miles  and miles alongside  eight foot fences in perfect order. We meet a couple of stags alongside the road with huge racks of antlers and an astonishing turn of speed when they ran alongside us unable to escape across these massive fences. 

It was warm, in the upper 60's windless and very dry, not an unpleasant afternoon but the gauge was dipping again and there was absolutely no sign of a town anywhere. Mathematically we were safe with 80 miles in the tank and thirty miles to go. But still...

I had ants in my pants because we couldn't stop, we had lost the power to decide, the road had no shoulders, no pull outs, no picnic areas, no parks, no scenic overlooks. We rolled along at forty miles an hour staring at nothing at all. This was like sailing when you get caught up in the shape of the waves and the little bubbles on the crest as they pass under the hull, and your mind goes blank. I settled back and let my mind go blank, I put aside the desire fo an empty dirt sidereal to drive up and park for the night here, where there would be nothing but stars.  The impenetrable fences pushed us on, squeezed us like toothpaste out of the tube.

We arrived of course, welcomed to the county seat of Val Verde County by two portapotties in a dusty empty lot. We greeted them like old friends and took advantage to empty our own tank while Rusty welcomed himself back to civilization with a quick tour of not very much. We turned onto Highway 90 and Del Rio made itself known to us, an all American city with cheap gas and every fast food outlet and box store known to any American.

We had bought a hotel room for the night, a Hampton Inn on Hilton points so it was free and thus much cheaper than a night in a full service campground. The showers, laundry and central heat were welcome and a quick check of my Google maps put us 7.7 miles from Ciudad Acuña in Coahuila State. Del Rio seems a world away from the Port of Entry and the whole other world we want to see. That will have to wait till Arizona; family obligations call us west, but north of the Rio Grande.

Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch

We left the cider company in Hye and were aiming to get to Fredericksburg, a town a half hour away along Highway 290 and the unofficial center of the Hill Country. Five minutes on the road and we came to a halt- again. A solitary sign invited us to check out the 36th President's ranch, known informally as the Texas White House.

Lyndon Johnson and his wife Ladybird were devoted to the Texas countryside where he grew up and where he liked to return as often as he could. The state has created a separate park next to the national historic site so the two parks, both free to visit, sit on opposite banks fo the Pedernales River which runs through the middle.

In the state park side e came across ball moss which a helpful sign explained is related to the pineapple, I kid you not. It is described as epiphyte which is what Spanish moss is also, a parasite basically but living off the air, not the host plant. There you have it.

They also have a 19th century demonstration farm operated by state park rangers living the life of German settlers. We kept going as farming is not our thing but we could see form the road they are pretty good at running a vegetable garden.

Bison are a big draw and the herd here crosses either side of the river. The state park notes professional hunters destroyed the herds on the Great Plains killing 30 million beasts. Nowadays happily the herds are being brought back but the great open ranges for them are gone.

The state park is actually quite large with a number of pull outs, picnic areas and trail heads. I can imagine in summer the huge live oaks provide welcome shade. On a 65 degree winter day they were what I would call picturesque. With all the driving we're doing we didn't need to worry about our 400 watts of solar on the roof topping off the batteries. A couple of hours deriving and our 600 amp lithium battery bank is fully charged by our twin alternators.

I was busy chasing the statue of the President while Rusty led Layne toward the park road and the Pedernales River.

The statue apparently catches President Johnson in a typical gesture pointing to the river which was the center of his home in Texas.

You can see why he liked it here and in a minute we'll cross the river and check out his ranch.

Rusty could wander anywhere with us, very civilized, except inside the buildings as usual.  He didn't seem to mind.

There are no wildflowers in December but there were always reminders of the founders of this collection of fields and prairies.

The national historic site respects the entry sticker the state provides (for free) on the other side of the river and there wasn't anyone there to check us in. We crossed several cattle guards as we drove through the ranch which is how cows are kept in their various pastures. But inside the fences they roam totally freely. 

And have right of way.

This is a real ranch, please note.

Layne loved the calves here they are, a bunch of teenagers at lunch.

And there were deer too. I don't think cattle guards faze them.

The ranch is on a slope rising above the river valley. Interestingly the top of the ridge is... just more fields! You get to the top and among the many pull outs you can stop and read little blurbs about farming in the President's day.

The dark green in the distance is the normal ground cover in the Hill Country, dark leaved live oak trees, rolling to the horizon and beyond.

You drive yourself through the ranch on the single lane road, past private residences, park volunteers living in their RVs on the property and of course past the animals wandering loose.

LBJ was fond of his western image and he liked to play the country hick during his political career, but everyone who came up against him said he was a consummate politician always working to make a deal to further his agenda.

Any plane the President rides on gets the "Air Force One" call sign and the plane that brought the 36th President to his ranch is now stored on site not far from the paved landing strip on the ranch. 

Rangers are doing an exterior tour of the Texas White House and people were gathering but decided to keep going.

It was a lovely sunny day on the ranch and we left the cattle doing their thing in fields planted specially to feed them.

Back on Highway 290 we settled in for a drive to Fredericksburg 20 minutes to the west. We passed breweries and wineries and wondered what a German town in the American west might look like.