Ah Texas, over 20C by 7am lol
We woke early thanks to a previous occupant having left the alarm set at 6am. Deciding to get an early start we got up and had breakfast, Pete's waffle was in the shape of Texas! Very cool lol. We were on the road as the sun was rising.
An hour on the way we came across some police activity where a semi truck had lost its rear axel from the trailer! We first saw the mangled axle assembly near a damaged guard rail then further along sat the truck with the trailers arse end buckled and sitting on the road.
We passed by Waco, up there with Ruby Ridge for famous ATF / FBI c*** ups.
I'd read about a river walk in San Antonio which had picnic areas etc so we stopped in with plans to have some lunch. It was not what I'd expected, the "river" was more a man made canal with filthy water in it lined with restaurants, bars and shops. Under the bridges that crossed the river it was really dingy, there were lights but assume they only put them on at night. The only thing that vaguely resembled picnic areas were concrete benches along the way, no tables so not suitable for making wraps as we do each day. Ah well, we got to stretch our legs and check out a bit of the city.
A very short way out of town we spotted an F-16 flying low and fast and Pete got all excited to finally be seeing more than helicopters :-)
There was a lot of cotton by the sides of the road both long before and long after we passed fields of cotton looking ready to be picked.
As we got closer to the border we started to again see stations set up looking for smuggled illegal immigrants.
For the most part agriculture gave way to low scrub and cactus.
The temp slowly rose hitting a high of 38C.
Del Rio turned out to have a lot less of a Mexican flavour than I'd hoped for. I guess as Pete pointed out, with a large air base near by the major demand would be for American brands etc
We stopped there and picked up some bits and pieces, fruit etc for the next few days and kept heading west. There's a wall a couple of blocks from the main road intended to keep out illegal drugs and immigrants, it's not much of a deterrent by the looks of it. A wee way out of town is the Armistad state park. The lake is a very irregular shape, nice and blue and is on both sides of the border.
Out of town and away from the lake it's again desert, low scrub and cactus with the odd willy willy springing up here and there.
We got stopped at a border protection check point so they could get their dog to check the car over. We were asked if we were US citizens, when we said no he wanted our passports which were in the boot. He got us to pull over so we could get them and called another officer to come over and he didn't speak to us, just stood with his hand on his gun lol after flicking through our passport for far longer than necessary and asking where we were going he handed them back and said we could go. Considering we weren't crossing a border I'm not sure what that was all about, maybe they were just bored. Although it didn't bother us at all it seemed to be meant to intimidate us, if that was the case then they failed miserably lol.
Whilst still quite the desert landscape we did cross the odd spectacular river which had carved it's route out forming deep canyons. There are also a lot of dry river beds.
The only consistent signs of life we saw were a few wild goats here & there. Pete saw 4 or 5 vultures munching on the carcass of some unfortunate animal, later we both saw one dining on a deer carcass and oddly enough, four sitting on consecutive fence posts. We disturbed an eagle on the road that was having a go at a carcass of some sort too. A lone roadrunner (but no coyote unless you count a dead one on the side of the road lol) pretty much accounted for all wild life sightings while on the road today.
We got to a small town, Sanderson and checked in at a mom and pop motel for the night. Nice big room with everything we need. We had a crock pot chicken casserole I made a couple of days ago for dinner and cranked up the crock pot to make some curry for tomorrow night.