Thoughts on tent living, "neighbors" and family.

Tuesday morning started with breakfast and shopping. We noshed on potato, egg and cheese tacos at Mahaley's (which was yummy), then strolled back to the car, buying doormats about dogs who lick too much and t-shirts about farting along the way... doing our part to support the local economy, after all. We stocked up on provisions, hardtack, fatback and the like from the local general store (H-E-B) and then hit the road for Balmorhea. We made great time as there isn't a lot to distract one along that route. About two-thirds of the way along our 300+ mile journey, we stopped for a delightful picnic lunch at one of Texas' delightful designated rest stops (and I wasn't even propositioned for anonymous sex in the men's room!)... we chatted briefly with a nice gal from Colorado as we enjoyed our sandwiches. Her travelling companion was a Great Dane named Zane, who was about the size of Kyle Field. We got into Balmorhea State Park about an hour later... set up our tent, watched a snake start to eat something, then change its mind (leaving behind some manner of lovely corpse), fed bread to turtles (some of which were assholes), had a kick ass grill-out, pissed off our neighbor by daring to talk in conversational tones in our tent a minute before quiet time at 10 PM, the same neighbor who again admonished us around 2 AM when we were having what you might call "tent issues". After he threatened to have us "ejected" from the park, we decided to CUT DOWN our tent, throw it away, pack up and leave. We hit the road for Ft. Davis a few hours earlier than planned, missing a  scenicly breathtaking drive through the mountains in the middle of the night, instead settling for a terrifying drive through the mountains in the middle of the night. We ended up checking into a roadside motel around 2:40 in the morning. The lobby smelled like a bad buffet and the room smelled like mothballs... and we were both thrilled to be there at this refuge from shelter shortcomings and fuckstick neighbors. We woke up the next morning, relatively well-rested... completely repacked the truck to reset from our camping failures and subsequent flight and hit the road again for a short trip to Eilene's cousins place, not knowing how good things were about to get! She'll catch you up on that fabulousness sometime very soon. Now, enjoy some relevant photographs!