Reviewing three FREE RV parks in North Texas.

Our next planned stop was in Texas. We wanted to take this opportunity to stay at three of the free city RV parks in the panhandle of Texas. Our first stop was at the Ray and Donna West Free RV Park in Muleshoe, TX. We have stayed at this park before so we knew what to expect.

Muleshoe is a small city with a population of around 5,000 people. The city is known for its agriculture, particularly in the production of potatoes, cotton, and cattle. The free city park is right in town and has eight RV spots with water, sewer and electricity (30 and 50 amp). A sewage dump station is available on site. You can stay free up to three nights and there is a donation box.

Nearby is Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge which is worth a visit.. There is also a nice place to eat with a bar right across the  as well as other conveniently located businesses near the downtown area. Oh I must mention there is also some awesome Tex-Mex food to enjoy.

We took a day trip over to the refuge and found some short hikes and  a bit of birdwatching. We spotted quite a few horned larks which are a quite interesting little birds with its tufts of feathers on its head resembling horns. They are plentiful in the plains states which is why we haven’t often encountered them.

Our next free park stop was in Levelland,Texas located 30 miles west of Lubbock.and has a population of 12,600. It is the home of South Plains College and home to the Levelland City Campground. The campground is free, has seven sites, and provides electric (30 and 50 amp). and water hookups s well as a dump station.

The campground is located south of town on Highway 385, next to the Levelland Municipal Airport. It i really a nice wooded park which we had all to ourselves during our three day stay ( the park offers 3 nights max for free and then $20 per night up to seven afterwards). We stayed the entire three nights since it was close to Lubbock where we explored both the town and Texas Tech University.

The museum on campus is worth a visit.  We happily discovered lots of interesting sights including some huge dinosaur skeletons, Indian Art and some cool photographs like the one i took of a tree frog, super cool.

Our last free campsite stop was in Lamesa, Texas. The population is about 8,600 and is located about an hour south of Lubbock on the Llano Estacado. Founded in 1903. the town site had been part of the large Slaughter Ranch, famous for its “Lazy S” brand. The town was carved out of 160 acres of Frank Conner's Ranch

The Lamesa RV Park also called Rodeo RV Park is in a city park with eight back-in sites on asphalt with water and electric (only one site has 50 amp). The park is the least desirable of the three we visited. Campers can stay up to four nights free however, we only stayed one night as the town was a bit underwhelming.

The only highlight for us was the frisbee golf course within the park (in the above picture you can see our RV in the background)..  The course was a few steps from our front door continuing across the street and was a nice little course to play. Big Spring State Park is also nearby but we had visited it before. We panned to stay two nights but aa I mentioned the town left us feeling a bit depressed  so we moved on down the road…Its always nice to be back in Texas!

Sweetwater Wetlands Birding and a little disc golf in Tucson AZ

Well, it was finally time to leave the greater Phoenix area and move on down the road. As many may know we never travel too far and as such our next stop was a little more than 120 miles to Tucson Arizona. We pulled into the Rincon West RV Resort with a plan to stay for five days of half priced camping using our Passport America card.

The resort is similar to the one we stayed at in Mesa (Tower Point) as it has many of the same amenities. We prefer to winter at Mesa rather than Tucson because Tucson is typically about 10 degrees cooler than in Mesa since it is higher in elevation.

Our first day we spent hiking and birding at the Sweetwater Wetlands in west Tucson. The park is a wildlife habitat, public park and water treatment facility all rolled into one. It was built in 1996 to handle backwash filter water from the reclaimed water plant and is now a mature wetland with more than 2.5 miles of shady trails. It has also become a popular birding hotspot.

With temperatures in the mid to low 80’s the weather was perfect to be outdoors. We hiked the full 2.5-mile trail around the perimeter of the ponds and while hiking we were able to see many beautiful birds who call the wetlands home.

With it being spring many of the birds were singing which made them easier to find now that the trees are no longer bare. It is always nice to see a lot of green in the desert, but it does make it trickier to find birds.

Our next day in Tucson we decided to go to a park nearby and play a round of disc golf. We have played this course before, so we looked forward to playing it again.

The course isn’t real long and isn’t overly challenging. However, this is a nice course laid out well in typical Mesquite desert scrub found in the Tucson area. We always enjoy playing disc golf here as it is also a good place to birdwatch which is why we carried our binoculars with us. Our plan was to play a little disc golf, birdwatch a little and then head over to happy hour in Tucson. Although we truly enjoyed our stay in Mesa, it was nice to have a change in scenery!

Winter 2022–2023, It’s a Wrap!

Our winter stay became a month longer than originally planned. Towerpoint invited us to come in early a discounted rate and because we stayed two weeks longer in April for me to take care of a medical issue we actually stayed four months in Mesa AZ.

We surprisingly only did a little bit of hiking mostly due to the chilly weather most of the winter this year. It seemed all the extremes limited our long hiking excursions whether it was cold, rainy or super-hot.

We did, however, enjoy the amenities of the RV park. We were able to fall into a routine of working out at the onsite fitness room five days a week and as a result we are certainly in better shape now than we first arrived. Now we just have to maintain this level of fitness sans the convenient fitness center.

We also played a little bit of disc golf, a sport we both really enjoy playing. We played some pickleball at our resort as well. We prefer just playing singles when we play pickleball as it gives us a better workout than doubles do.

We met a lot of new people who we now call friends and were lucky enough that late in the season some of our previously made friends showed up here. It was so fun to enjoy their company as well.

There were some holiday festivities we participated in. Mardi Gras and St. Patty’s day were two of our favorite celebrations at Towerpoint.

There were plenty of happy hours at one of the many Cal-Am parks while listening to some live music. We also snuck off to visit a few Breweries and enjoyed happy hours at old town Gilbert AZ.

We were glad to see that they have cornhole boards at several of the resorts in Arizona as we missed playing this game. When we wintered in Florida this was a very popular activity.

We also visited several locations for some winter and migratory birding. Our very favorite sport was birding at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve. Sharon really enjoyed trying to capture the flitting little birds with her camera and did a great job on several of them, including this Verdin (a very tiny bird) above.

It wasn’t all fun as both Sharon, and I caught Covid (omicron) while wintering in Arizona. We both still have a few lingering effects from this encounter. We also had to endure some medical issues after we visited our Dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale AZ. Sharon had to do a lip peel for her lower lip as it had some precancerous concerns. I was unfortunate enough to need a couple of Mohs surgeries on two Basel Cell Carcinomas; both were successfully removed.

Despite these setbacks we really have enjoyed our stay here and look forward to returning soon. We went ahead and made reservations for next year but may or may not come here as it is way too far in the future to make any solid plans.

If we do come back, we really do look forward to seeing our new friends again!

Red Mountain Park AZ

Another really nice place to visit located in Mesa close to our resort is Red Mountain Park.  It is a decent sized park at 1,146 acres in size and has a little bit of fun for everyone. The park has a playground with lots of play equipment for the kiddos, a lighted basketball court, a fishing lake, walking trails, as well as a nice disc golf course. Red Mountain Park offers several of our favorite activities including hiking, bird watching, and disc golf.

Our first trip there was to do a little birdwatching on the trail surrounding the fishing lake. The trail is fairly popular with walkers, but you can venture off the main trail down to the edge of the water as fishermen have created a dirt path all around it.

We parked (there is free parking) and one of the first birds we spotted was a bald eagle soaring overhead. Obviously, it was a great start to our day of birding. The lake had a nice assortment of ducks on it as well. As we walked along the water’s edge, we could see several largemouth bass and rainbow trout (they are stocked) so it became obvious why the eagle was hanging about.

Red Mountain Park’s trail has a nice assortment of vegetation so were able to spot lots of woodland and grassland birds as well as the aquatic ones in and around the pond.

Our next trip to Red Mountain Park we decided to play a little disc golf. The park has a disc golf course called Red Mountain Disc Golf Course. There are two courses with 36 holes in total. The course has a 4.3-star rating, and we found it quite enjoyable even though it was a bit difficult to locate each hole in the proper order.

The course was fun and has a good layout zigzagging through desert shrubbery. Holes are of a nice range of hole lengths with none too far apart. There are a few Ace opportunities throughout the course making it even more fun even though neither of us achieved an Ace. But who know, maybe next time…

Yet another quirky stop in Marfa Texas and a hike at Ft Davis Natl. Monument…

We really enjoyed our brief stopover in Marathon Texas but it became time to move on and our next stop would be in Marfa Texas. Marfa is well known for the Marfa Lights.

"”The Marfa Lights, mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the West Texas town of Marfa, have mystified people for generations. According to eyewitnesses, the Marfa Lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white, blue, yellow, red or other colors. Reportedly, the Marfa Lights hover, merge, twinkle, split into two, flicker, float up into the air or dart quickly across Mitchell Flat.”

We wondered if maybe we would see the Marfa lights?

Our park was the Tumble In RV Park which is a no frills park on the outside of town but it does have an interesting feature nearby that I’ll talk more about later in this blog. Marfa is a county seat and as such has a nice courthouse. The town is also known for being an arts hub and is a bit quirky as well.

We found a small disc golf course in Marfa to play. It had a limited number of baskets and a confusing layout of 18 holes. Even it was a quirky encounter. One that stopped Sharon in her tracks was what appeared to be a Mardi Gras mask buried on a mound of dirt. The course also had a few interesting mandatories (mandos)  to challenge us and we had to smile when we saw some Christmas ornaments decorating the cacti as we played. It was fun.

Close to Marfa is another small Texas town called Fort Davis. We made the drive over to the National Historic Site to tour the fort and take a short 3 mile hike in the hills around it. With several steep climbs we were well above the fort giving us glimpses of what many soldiers and probably Indians may have seen over a 100 years ago.

The hike was scenic, reeked of history and was pretty well maintained. We really enjoyed this hike and as many of you may know about us, once we finish a hike we like to find a spot for a cold beer.

So back to Marfa where made time for a cold beer at the historic Paisano Hotel. It is well known because the entire cast of the movie Giant stayed here. People such as Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge and Dennis Hopper.were all there. Pictures taken on the movie set adorn the walls of the lobby and common areas so it was fun to admire them while walking through.

Now back to the Marfa Lights. Did we see them? No, we didn’t but we saw something we thought was cooler. They are called the Actual Contact or the Marfa Pillars. This artistic endeavor began as an idea first constructed at a Burning Man festival and later created in Marfa.

Actual Contact is art that is composed of twelve 10ft steel pillars arranged in a arch adjacent to our RV park so we were able to walk to it. Each 10ft pillar is inscribed with arcane symbols created by the artist Jason WA Tucker.

On each column there are two images, one on each side cut into the pillars.. Inside the pillars are lights that come on at night making the images brilliantly sharp. The illuminated images seemingly float above the desert floor in the dark of night. In the daytime they were simply brown columns with a faint outline of the images seen by day only up close..

So, in a way, YES, we did see the Marfa Lights and they were way cooler than we would have ever imagined.

Quirky Marathon Texas

We left Seminole Canyon and made our way further west. Our next stop was at the Marathon Motel and RV Park in Marathon, TX. Marathon is another little Texas town  we have passed through but never stopped at. It’s not a typical small town in Texas as there is a quirkiness to this town reflecting the population choosing to live there.

We are only staying a couple of nights as we know cold weather can hit us in this part of the USA anytime so we will move through rather quickly to avoid as much cold as we can. Upon arrival we set up and since there was not much of the day left we walked from the RV park into the town of Marathon. The stroll to the town was a pleasant 3/4 mile walk.

There really isn’t a lot to check out in Marathon as it has a population of just under 400 people. However, there are some interesting sights to see. Our first stop was to visit the French Grocer, the only grocery store in Marathon. It wasn’t a typical grocery store as it featured lots of unique items one would expect to see at upscale city stores. It was definitely fun to browse this store.

Another cool spot to check out was the historic Gage Hotel. The hotel is again not one you would expect to see in a small Texas town. The Marathon  Gage Hotel is a higher end hotel complete with a fine dining restaurant and a cool little tavern on premises. Of course one of our two nights we had to try the White Buffalo Bar.

Our last point of interest was a stop at the Brick Vault Restaurant & Brewery. This establishment also makes Bar B Que and recently made the top list of new BBQ places by Texas Monthly magazine. On the Sunday of our visit the BBQ was already sold out but that didn’t stop us from trying their brews, some of which we found to be exceptionally good. Visitors should however be aware that they are only open from Thursday to Sunday.

Before leaving we also made the short drive over to Alpine Texas to pick up a few items and to play a round of disc golf. The disc course is on the campus of Sul Ross State University and while it wasn’t an exceptional course we still had fun playing a round there. Upon leaving we both reflected we were glad we made the effort to explore Marathon, Texas.

Baseball, Basketball and Disc Golf in Aggieland

We aren’t usually in our old home town in the Fall since we normally travel through  only in the spring. However, when we decided at the last minute this summer we weren’t going to winter in Florida as we originally planned, we pivoted and decided that we would winter in Arionna. As a result we ended up in College Station this fall.

Being In Central Texas in early fall means that everything is mostly brown after the usually hot and dry summers. This year is no different as the landscape is parched. One positive about being here in the fall which hadn’t occurred to us is we have found a lot of fall sports opportunities.

Fall baseball at Texas A&M University is in full swing and we were able to watch a few exhibition games. While neither of us are huge baseball fans there is nothing more entertaining about baseball than attending a game live. It sure was fun watching the Aggies play in their super nice stadium.

We also were able to watch a fall exhibition Men’s basketball game in Reed Arena. I use to be one of  the statisticians for the Men’s Basketball team so it was fun having this opportunity to watch college hoops again. The team has a new coach from when I was last in the arena so it was also fun to watch the new coach.

Texas A&M’s basketball was very impressive in the shellacking of a team they only beat by four last year. The talent added through the transfer portal appears to be very skilled. I think this year’s team is going to be way better than people think, so look out SEC these Aggies look pretty darned good!

We have also been playing some disc golf here. The courses in this area are not all that nice but they are about average in quality when compared to all the courses we have played across the country. Our favorite course is a challenging nine hole course which we usually play twice.

We rarely see anyone else playing disc golf in Bryan/College Station which explains the lack of quality courses . We find this surprising given there are over 60,000 students attending Texas A&M University and nearly 19,000 at Blinn College!

Our stay here is nearing its end and we will once again be on the road making our way toward San Antonio to spend time with our son and his family for Thanksgiving.