Arizona Spring Training Trip 2016 - Day 12

We left Marathon about 9:15 am and as we drove by the Gage Hotel heading east, we noticed at least a dozen Shelby Cobra sports cars parked at the hotel along the frontage road.  People were milling around them getting ready to head out after apparently spending the night at the hotel.  Again, you are never sure what you are going to see in the desert.

We stopped for gas on the way out of town and headed east on a virtually deserted Higthway 90. There was more of  "nothing", actually lots of it, all the way to Del Rio, Texas. During the almost 175 miles to Del Rio we probably saw a half-dozen cars, maybe three trucks and a couple of RVs.  One thing we did see were a lot of were Border Patrol vehicles patrolling the dirt frontage road next to the highway.  We also saw Border Patrol vehicles towing 3 large truck tires connected in a triangular way with chains.  I suspect they were keeping the dirt road fairly level and maybe preventing washboarding that can be common on dirt roads.  Actually, we saw several other groups of tires connected to each other sitting at frontage road intersections.  I suspect when Border Patrol vehicles patrol a road segment they periodically need to tow tires to the next intersection.  We did not see them catch anyone.  We went through one border check ourselves in all the distance we drove today.  They asked if we were U. S. citizens and sent us on.

The road out of marathon was fairly straight and level and then we started through a long stretch of rolling hills and curved roads, almost all the way to Del Rio.  We also started experiencing a quartering head wind from the southeast.  It also became very cloudy, the first real clouds we have seen since leaving home.  We also passed through several "barely alive" little towns with most everything run down and/or closed.  It was sad to see the failure of the local inhabitants being unable to "make a go of it".  When we got to Del Rio, which is right at the border and home to a USAF pilot training base (Laughlin AFB) things began to change.

There were more people and structures after Del Rio and  and we started passing through several towns/cities such as Bracketville, Uvalde, Sabinal, Hondo, and Castroville along Highway 90 on the way to San Antonio.  There was also more traffic and It felt that we had left the prairie/desert and entered perhaps what could be called "rural" Texas.  The clouds also cleared and it was sunny (and a little windy) the rest of the way to San Antonio.

We arrived in San Antonio, approaching from the south of town about 4:30 pm.  The RV park where we are staying, Traveller's RV Park and Resort, is only a couple of miles off the freeway and just south of center city.  It is a nice park; we stayed here last year.  We will be here two nights.  We are not sure what we will be doing tomorrow, but we will sleep in and go from there.

It was a long day today.  We are doing dinner in the RV and it will be early to bed tonight.

No pictures today; I'll post some tomorrow.