South Texas border towns

Interesting countryside during our drive today. We travelled about 185 miles which for us is a long day, but RV parks in this part of Texas are few and far between. Plus, what we now know, a lot of the parks are filled with oilfield workers who are here on a temporary basis.

Interesting, there were a few big houses in the first part of the journey, from Fulton Lake to Laredo.

Many of them looked fairly new.

However, most of the houses looked like this…

and this.

This part of Texas is call “Brush Country”. 

But there were a few cultivated fields where melons and onions were being grown.

We got to Laredo about high noon and in addition to filling the car with diesel, we stopped in the local HEB supermarket. Laredo is a big city with a population of about 125,000.

Around Laredo we saw an increased presence of Border Guards.

About 20 miles out of Laredo, when we left the interstate to travel state highway 83, which is a two lane highway with a speed limit of 75, we came upon flashing lights, and a sign that told us that all traffic would have to stop ahead if the lights were flashing.

This roadblock greeted us.  The officer with the dog went all around the Airstream while the other officer talked to us about his surprise that our Benz could tow the Airstream. Then we were told to, “Have a nice day”, and away we went.

As we were getting back on the highway, we noticed this sign. What is a “CDL” we wondered.

Shortly thereafter, we began coming upon this scene along the road.

There were more and more of these pumping and refining stations.

Pretty soon all you could see were refineries and building in support of "oilfield services".

Many of these petroleum processing plants had a cluster of RVs adjacent to them where the workers lived on a temporary basis.

And there were tanker trucks galore.

This is Carrizo Springs. I had called an RV park located here for a reservation but was told that they were “all full up.”

But there was the ever present Walmart.

Watch out for trucks entering the highway!

When we got to the RV park where we are staying tonight, the Triple R RV Park and Resort, we talked to the woman in the office about the oilfield work. She said that the boom around these parts has been going on for about 5 years. In addition to maintaining the pumping and refining stations for both natural gas and oil, workers have been coming here to do construction work to build the refineries and to lay the pipe. 

She said that things have kind of quieted down the past few months, since the price of oil has tanked. She said that when the price per barrel reaches about $85 there are still plenty of wells to drill and refineries to build. 

She also told us that CDL means Commercial Drivers License.

The Triple R is located along the banks of the Nueces River.  You may remember that pre-Mexican War, the Mexican government refused to acknowledge the Rio Grande as the border and declared that it was the Nueces River instead. At this point it isn’t much of a river, but the Triple R has developed a Nature Trail along the river bank.

It is still unseasonably cold here in Texas and the sky has been overcast for the past 4 days.

Someone has gone to the trouble of posting signs along the trail, I guess to give you something to think about as you walk along.

Like this one.

Someone must have thought this was very clever. (Can you notice that this is an old saw?)

As we were walking along we came to this low hanging cluster of mistletoe. Here’s Frederick looking expectant. We did take a selfie, kissing under the mistletoe, but we want to keep that picture to ourselves. Or we might put the picture on coffee mugs and send them to our kids!

Right at the end of the trail we came upon what we think is a pet cemetery. 

Notice the solar lights by the markers.

Someone loved these dogs.