Day Seventeen – Fort Stockton to Sonora, Texas

Yesterday was shopping day for the Happy Wanderers. Not only were we out of orange juice so we had to take our vitamins with fizzy grapefruit juice, but the bread was short, the bananas were gone, and we were seriously low on dishwashing liquid. So after leaving camp and grabbing a quick fill-up at a nearby gas station, we set off to find the nearest Wally World, the store that’s becoming our cherished home away from home. Though shopping there was once the epitome of poor taste as far as we were concerned, the store has become the one familiar face we can count on for what we have become, strangers in a strange land.

Fortunately, we had actually seen one while wandering through the town of Fort Stockton the day before. I knew from the RV park description that it was located very close to highway 285, the road on which we had been traveling most of the day since leaving the Carlsbad Caverns area in New Mexico. So, I did a circuit around part of the town hoping to see a sign that might direct me east or west along the Interstate 10 corridor along which the park supposedly lay. That’s when we saw the Wally World right on main street and made a mental note of its location. It was, therefore, a simple matter to repeat my steps from the previous day and, voilà, we were in business.

After loading up all the essentials for another week or so on the road, we jumped back on Interstate 10 going east with the intention of finding the Annie Riggs museum. I had only said to Concetta that we must watch for the museum’s point-of-interest sign on the freeway when she said, “next exit.” We’d gone precisely one mile on the freeway and then had to hit the exit.

As we have so often experienced on this journey, the presence of a sign on the freeway is no guarantee of further signage once you hit the surface streets at the bottom of the off ramp. Such was the case today. One sign on the interstate and we were flung into the oldest part of Fort Stockton with nary a word on just where we were to go next. No matter, since we’re always keen to explore, before long we had wandered around sufficiently to actually stumble over the location of the museum, had parked the rig, and had mounted the porch steps of what looked like an old hotel

This particular hotel looked like something out of the Victorian age, but beneath the newer clapboard exterior lay a much older building constructed of adobe. We didn’t have high hopes at first as the museum docent in charge refused to take our money due to the presence of ongoing “refurbishment.” Still, we hadn’t been there long when we fell into an easy conversation with the woman and learned just about everything that had ever happened on that site. Tales of murder and mayhem abounded. Divorce followed divorce for the one-time proprietress. Sheriff husbands killed in ambush. Miscreant boyfriends hung on courtyard oak trees. Good heavens, we thought, the folks in this town sure were a rowdy bunch.

The photo upper right is off Concetta pointing to our pushpin on the map. We were the first tourists to visit the museum from Carson City and our pushpin was almost the only one from Nevada. The Museum curator personally conducted us from room to room, relating the hotel's history as we went. It wasn’t long and we had not only learned the entire history of the town, the hotel, and the nearby fort, but we had begun to be introduced to nearby neighbors who were only too glad to continue the discussion. One old gentleman even led me over to his house, revealing in the process that the structure had been the town’s terminus of the Butterfield Stage Line back in the day (photo left). I spent at least a half hour with the old-timer, a chap named “Nall,” learning most of his history from his birthday forward.

Pretty soon we were lining up the neighbors for photos, buying books on western history from the museum collection, and interviewing the gardener to ask about the archaeological potential for the property. At some point it occurred to me that we might have to scope out a house to buy in town because they weren’t going to let us leave any time soon. I think I shook hands with nearly everyone about twelve times while edging toward the door and finally said that we just HAD to go visit the nearby military facility while it was still daylight. The folks at the hotel allowed as how that would be a good idea and finally waved goodbye as we dashed for the truck.

The old military fort that had begun history for the town of Fort Stockton (named after the same guy that Stockton, California was named for) was just a half dozen blocks away and turned out to be pretty interesting. We spent another hour thoroughly touring all the reconstructed buildings, watching the videos in the museum, and taking a ton of photos. About the time we had decided to break it off and retrace our steps to the RV I discovered that my good old reliable Nikon had taken it upon itself to edit my endeavors and I subsequently lost some of the most interesting shots. As you might guess, I was one mighty irritated human.

But no matter, we had a really great time in Fort Stockton (the town and the fort itself), made some friends, learned some history, and were none the worse for wear in the end. I did lose a very nice shot of me sitting on an old covered wagon that had been used in a couple of John Wayne movies when the camera malfunctioned, but there’s always going to be, as Mary Chapin Carpenter puts it, “stones in the road” of life. With the sun high overhead we bid farewell to Fort Stockton and headed for Interstate 10 and further Happy Wanderer adventures.

Several hours later, as the sun set behind the Netleaf oak–covered hills of northwest Texas, we could be found in a secluded and tiny little RV park on the property of the Sonora Caverns facility near the town of the same name. Unlike most of our previous RV parks this trip, the Sonora facility had, at the time, exactly TWO of us in residence. There’s no sewer connection available and I had to explain twice what WiFi was before the resident agent told me, “well, no, we don’t have none of that.” But it was truly idyllic there. There were peacocks and deer wandering the grounds, a rock shop to explore, and a whole lot of nothing in all directions. There WAS a biker gang in residence when we drove up, their members lounging on the porch, but they seemed to be peaceable enough and I suspected that they were more of the “certified public account” types of cycle guys than the “kill ya for fun” types. Slowly, as the evening wore on, the tiny park began to fill up. By nightfall we had about five neighbors and even met a few as they took their evening constitutional. One couple I chatted with hailed from the California Gold Country just a stone’s throw from where we live in Nevada and, of all things, close to Lodi where we went to purchase this RV. We had a lively conversation on a variety of subjects and I was happy, at one point, to learn that they had been married for over fifty years and had spent at least a third of that time RVing. Finally, as they strolled back towards their home on wheels, I watched them go and smiled. Yup, this is the life.