Our original plan was to take off Saturday morning for 3 days in the triangle of Alpine, Fort Davis, and Marfa (ever heard of Marfa lights?) before we blitz to Las Vegas for our granddaughter’s (Montana’s) national soccer tournament, but life interrupted our plans. At least we got to see this beautiful sunset on our almost last night!
So, what happened?
Here’s the first problem. On Friday when we were backing up out of a tight parking spot, Barney felt something wasn’t right, like the brakes were on and we were fighting them. We decided to drive home to our campsite instead of going to the hot springs (besides, we were already really hot). Driving forward was fine, but every time he backed up, the brakes seemed to fight him.
When we got back to the campsite, he tested the brakes a few times and they seemed to be okay. Saturday morning we packed up and drove out. About half a mile down the road, we heard a horrible sound and smelled a horrible smell and pulled over quickly to collect ourselves. We called the campground owners to verify that we could pull back into the site we had just left; they said “yes” and were sorry about the problem. Barney put on his flashers, slowly turned around, and we went back to the campground, using the trailer’s brakes.
New friend #1: A couple had moved in next to us, and when we came back, he came over to see what was going on. Dan had been a mechanical engineer for years and has a Ford F250 so was really familiar with our truck. Over the weekend, he and Barney talked a lot about trucks and RVs that I care nothing about. This morning before they left, he loaned Barney his truck manual for a little while so Barn could double-check what he needed to do.
We planned on slowly driving the truck to the only shop in town Monday morning; it’s the only repair shop within an hour’s drive. Dan offered to drive Barn back after dropping the truck off.
New friend #2: Meanwhile, Barney started talking with the campground’s owner, Leon, about what was happening with the truck.
just outside of Big Bend
Would you believe that Leon used to be an automotive mechanic and still has all of his equipment? Leon offered to drive Barney to Alpine (80 miles away) to buy new brake pads and help Barn replace them. Barney also thought that he needed help removing some bolts holding the brake pads on and that his tools wouldn’t fit. Leon called “his guy” at O’Reilly’s in Alpine on Sunday about what we needed and found out we needed to order the bolts and they’d be available in a couple of days (Tuesday morning).
So tomorrow (Tuesday) they’ll drive to Alpine, get the parts, come back, replace the pads, and we’ll take off to El Paso for a quick overnight. We should be able to get to Las Vegas by Friday afternoon, our original plan! We really do want to come back to the 3 towns that we’re missing out on.
But . . . since we were in the park on Easter morning, we were able to be online for an hour and watch the service from our home church, North Point Community Church in Alpharetta. So grateful for this!
Also . . . since we had an unplanned night here, love history, and value putting it all together, we watched a new movie Barney had downloaded from Netflix, The Highwayman, with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. It’s about the 2 former Texas Rangers who were tasked as Texas highway patrolmen (instead of as Texas Rangers since the organization had basically been shut down) to find and take down Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.
These two rangers had fought Pancho Villa along the border in this area from 1915-1919, a time-frame we learned about both here in Big Bend and when we went to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. The actions of the rangers during the Mexican civil war along the border was a black mark on their reputation because so many new ranger companies were raised to fight Villa, but their lack of training and controls created problems. Frank Hamer, the main ranger in the movie, is one of the reputable men who brought the organization back to the reputation it had had and the reputation it has now. The movie suggests that Hamer was one of the problems, but history that we’ve read says differently.
Then we had a second problem. The night we got back to the campsite after having problems with the brakes, we found out that our water pump, which we use when we’re not hooked up to water, wasn’t working. Oh boy. We plan on boondocking as we drive to Las Vegas and afterwards as we go to Death Valley where we probably won’t have water hookups. Needless to say, a working water pump is crucial.
New friend #3: Barney got on google and found an RV repair guy in Alpine (80 miles away), and he said he’d come to us! Since we knew we’d be in the campground until at least Tuesday morning, he said he could drive to us Sunday afternoon and change out the pump. Sure enough, he showed up, changed the pump with a better one than originally came with the RV. So glad he found this business niche.
Assuming all goes well with the new brake pads, we’ll be ready to leave Big Bend and head northwest toward Las Vegas. We’ve been here for more than a week, and I’m sad about leaving. I’ve realized that I had been really looking forward to coming to Big Bend and am feeling a letdown about leaving. So I decided I needed a new place to look forward to, and I chose Lone Pine, California, on the eastern side of the Sierras (Barney always called it the back side of the Sierras) north of Death Valley. Barney has been talking about wanting to go to Lone Pine as long as we’ve been married, and we’ve never been able to fit it into any of our trips to visit Matt and Peggy (son and daughter-in-law) in Truckee, California. Its scraggy mountain range was the background for many black and white cowboy movies from our childhood.
Lone Pine it is.
