Day 189: Kickapoo Caverns State Park, TX

The day started out overcast with light rain, but had mostly cleared up by the time Alea had stopped riding for the day.  Things flatten out quite a bit from yesterday, with most of her 45 miles trending downhill to her stopping point in Brackettville.  The road surfaces were almost exclusively rough chipseal, but they either had wide shoulders or low traffic volumes.  The roads were rough enough that, by the end of her ride, the stem of her watch had abraded her skin enough to cause it to bleed.  It also is pretty unpleasant on your joints and your behind.

The big change in scenery today was that we started to skirt along a major cotton growing region.  It is now harvest time, and the picked cotton is rolled into huge rolls wrapped in yellow plastic (similar to hay rolls).  The other big change is that the border patrol is out in full force.  We saw several of their cars in various places along our route.

And Alea caught this guy washing his truck in the Nueces River.  I think I would want to be a little farther away from that swirling water intake, so that it isn't possible to step backward too far...

We opted to drive about 25 miles north of our route, to stay at Kickapoo Caverns State Park ($20, power, water, adjustable showers).  It seemed a better option than a more expensive park near the highway in Brackettville.  This is a fairly small campground of perhaps a couple dozen sites, and most likely its remoteness is why were we able to get in on a Saturday without a reservation.

This park used to be a working ranch, and there is a series of trails leading from the camping area that go past old stock troughs, water impoundment areas and other abandoned ranch structures.  There are also the caverns (closed to the public, except by reservation), which are home to thousands of bats, which come out to feed at sunset.

I love these old Aeromotor windmills.  These were hot stuff in the 1920s and 1930s, generating 32 volt power for remote farms and ranches across the country.  You could even buy 32 volt appliances from places like Sears.  Then FDR set up the Rural Electrification Administration and these windmills became obsolete.

Our first live armadillo siting for this year...

I didn't include a picture of our campsite at Wes Cooksey overlooking the Nueces River (Nueces is the Spanish word for walnuts), so here you go...