BIG SPRING, TX

Sorry - we ducked out on you - almost a week - again. Not a lot of wifi and when we've had it, it's been for short spurts to update our facebook page - and more recently - to check the weather!

Yikes! It is COLD! We are just not used to these temperatures. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself because we did have fairly nice temperatures late last week as we made our way up into the Texas Panhandle. 

Below you will see why I really shouldn't bother to make plans - since within one day my whole itinerary north was knocked off coarse.

LOTS of Bluebonnet flowers on the 87 north from Fredricksburg.

Mason was the first town. The last time we came down we passed through Mason - it looked like a neat place to me. We were considering stopping to look around this time but in the end we just looked at it through the windshield again.

According to my plan - our destination for the day was Brady. Last year on our way down I found Richards Park in Brady on either FreeCampsites.net or FreeCampgrounds.com .  It was a great little find and we ended up staying for two nights - a great deal at $10 per night. The biggest bonus was two playgrounds.

 Parked at Richards Park but not in a site. I had checked to see if there were any new comments for the RV Park but there weren't any. Too bad because if there had I would have seen that the price had increased to $20 per night. Still a good deal for full hookups and showers - but not what we wanted to pay. It's also a day park so we spent a few hours having lunch and visiting the playground.

WoW! If I was wondering how much Cassia had grown since we had been here - this picture does it! Here she is back in November of 2011 on the same slide.

And the BIG slide isn't quite so big now.

Unsure of where we were going to spend the night we got 

back on the road. 

Even if we didn't mind paying the fee for Richards Park it was a little to cool and windy to stay for the rest of the day.

 We carried on highway 87. According to the plan we were going to spend the next night at a Texas Rest Area just past San Angelo. Again we had spent the night there on our last trip the night before our Brady stop. It is a nice rest area with wifi. We pulled in and tried to hook up. Nope - nothing. Derek checked with the attendant - their wifi was down.

Back on the road.

Next city - Big Spring. Derek was tempted to go even further but we all had had a long day by this point. We did pass a Walmart - it was an option. In the end we drove from one side to the other and back again. After stopping for dinner at Rocky's (we had stopped at the Whataburger but saw that most everyone was at Rocky's - so we went there) we headed to the downtown that we had passed - down by the railway tracks.

As we got into the downtown we were quite surprised by what we found. A ghost town!

 Only a few buildings - as the one above - were occupied.

It was very strange because obviously a lot of money was put in recently for the infrastructure - ramps, sidewalks, lamp posts and benches.

After walking around so many well maintained and vibrant historic downtowns it was very sad to see. Guess they've all moved in beside Walmart.

The only place that still had something going on was this collection of railway cars - a coffee shop. It was closed for the night so we parked in front. Like our stealth camping spot? We were even able to get wifi for the night.

 Bean's World Cafe. Check them out!

The only tall structure in all of Big Springs is the Hotel Settles. Derek found out with our wifi that it had just opened after a complete restoration. We decided to go take a look in the morning.

The sun setting over the tracks. Derek took Roofous for a walk and snapped these evening pictures.

Friday morning the three of us walked over to the Settles.

Hotel Settles - quite the place.

We went for a tour of the interior - we were allowed to walk around the first two floors.

The dining room. Nice choice of colours - different - but in a good way.

Back downstairs we found the old restored telephone booth - is there another name for it? Not sure. Not the best picture but I wanted to show you and it was the only one I had.

  

We continued down the street and made a circle back to the van.

When we returned the coffee was open so we treated ourselves to a coffee and sandwich. 

The neat thing is that each rail car holds either the main coffee shop or seating area. We decided to sit in the yellow Union Pacific caboose. Our little office for a while.

Although we were tempted to stay for another night we decided to continue north. We didn't have far to go until my next scheduled over night stop at a free Municipal Park.

It's going to be -1C here tonight - brrrrrrrr. Wonder where we are? - Colorado - yup - we've been moving pretty fast.

Teresa

TODAY'S INTERESTING LINK: Being off line this last few days I'm really out of touch with what's been happening on the internet lately. Best I can come up with is where we are tonight - also stealth camping - Trinidad, Colorado. That's the link to the historic downtown where we took a walk this evening and stopped for great pizza.

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