Leisurely start today outside the Amber Dragon Moonshine brewery, in Adeline, TX. Got on the road eventually and immediately plunged into heat and more heat. Abilene is a centre of the AI boom with infrastructure building, data centers and power plants all around. That along with the dusty dry land makes for a rough environment. We passed endless stockyards filled with power related parts, hotels put in place for the workers, huge rv campgrounds to house the workers, hastily thrown up apartment blocks and roads, roads and more roads. This went on for a couple of hours, then slowly changed over to the oil fields. Little oil derricks pumping in every field. Occasional oil processing plants, then back to the derricks working away day in, day out. All of this means there are power pylons criss-crossing the landscape as far as the eye can see, in every direction. The stripping of the land from its natural covering of low lying bushes means that the dust is constantly whipped up by the wind into little dust devils and even into huge clouds hiding huge processing plants. Eventually we drove out of this as we got further south and closer to Big Bend National Park. The mountains loomed in the distance, the prickly pears and other cacti bloomed, and the steer foraged for food amongst the dry bushes. The closer we got to the Chisos basin campground in Big Bend, the more beautiful and peaceful it became. We found our sites for the next 4 nights, settled in and are looking forward to lots of hiking and beauty. Watch this page!
-Sally
