An Overnight Stay at Fort Stockton, Texas…

We lingered a bit in Van Horn at the Desert Willow Park and got out a little later than planned or so it seemed. The one hour time change to central time probably made the difference. Even worse for our internal clocks is another time change fro daylight savings time happens this Sunday.

Our drive of about 3 hours down boring Interstate 10 eventually took us to Fort Stockton. A sleepy little town but one that should have a story to tell. We had hoped to be going to Monahan's Sandhills State Park but canceled our reservations since we couldn’t get anything for the San Angelo area. While scanning vacancies in San Angelo State Park my initial assessment showed they had over 50 sites available. However, when looking closer on the Texas Parks and Wildlife site it has the option for more details and it turned out all those vacancies were primitive sites which we weren’t interested in. Sigh.

After more phone calls we landed a spot at Parkview RV Park. This is a Passport America park and did not rate so well with RV Park Reviews. In fact it will be the lowest rated park we have ever stayed at . The average score of 4.3 is below our normal standard as we usually opt to stay at  parks rated 6.5 and above but, hey, beggars can’t be choosey!

As we pulled in I couldn't help but laugh at the initial appearance of the park. Goodness! There are power wires crisscrossing all over the park. Some older (not well kept) RV’s were scattered throughout this rather large park. Most humorous was the RV Park’s sign. It is in the act of nearly falling down which reflects the overall upkeep (or lack thereof) in the park.

  After setting up we discovered there is not even one TV channel to be had, the patio pad has all but crumbled away and the picnic table has seen better days however the spaces are large and the park is very quiet. Yes, it is in need of repair but it has full hookups and with Passport America costs $14 for 50 amp service. Pretty? Definitely no! Functional? Yes and it is totally adequate for an overnight stay.

After lunch we drove over to the Ft Stockton visitor’s center and picked up a driving tour of town. We drove to the starting point but at stop number three (the original bank) we parked and walked the remainder of the tour. We really enjoyed our stroll through Fort Stockton and especially enjoyed being able to walk through the original historic jailhouse. Beware traveling into the solitary confinement cell as Sharon, (although previously warned) was startled by the striped clad mannequin in the corner just inside the cell.

 

To complete our stay we stopped at a local Mexican Food restaurant called Mi Casita. It was pretty tasty though it didn’t have the real Tex-Mex flavor I was aiming for. I suppose we are still close enough to New Mexico there is a tendency more toward New Mexican rather than Tex-Mex style. We enjoyed our meal at Mi Casita and their salsa and chips were fantastic!  At the end of our meal a small scoop of sherbet with a little spoon was brought to both of us with our bill.  It was a  really nice touch and a fitting way to end our day.

NOTE: We did stay one more night in Fort Stockton before moving over to Sonora Texas where we are now.