Fredericksburg, Texas–the missing blog entry

In March of 2010 we were in Fredericksburg, Texas for two visits of 10 days each. The first visit was a “tourist” visit to see the sights. At the end of that visit we decided to buy a new Montana 5th Wheel. We left Fredericksburg for a week in Kerrville then returned to Fredericksburg to move in to our new trailer. It was a very busy time and the blog was getting further and further behind so the blog entry of our “tourist” days never got written. WE LOVED FREDERICKSBURG! So, here on the one year anniversary of that visit is the story of our first 10 day visit to Fredericksburg.

After leaving the Caverns of Sonora we moved to Fredericksburg, Texas, It seemed  like almost ever RVing blog we follow the bloggers have spent some time in Fredericksburg,  in the Texas Hill Country. The town was founded by German immigrants in 1846. It has many old buildings built from limestone bricks. The “new” Catholic Church is 105 years old and old Catholic Church is still standing at 160 years old. Both of these buildings are in use today and are gorgeous inside.

The “new” Catholic Church The old Catholic Church

We were told that the town has 86 eating places and half of them served German food. Depending on your taste that may or may not be a good thing, but, for me it was wonderful. Fredericksburg is also the home of the oldest microbrew in Texas. Which serves both German and typical Pub food. Of course we had to make a few visits there to tryout the food and beer. We approved of both.

Fredericksburg is also the birthplace of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Forces in World War II. The hotel owned by Nimitz's grandfather has been restored to how it looked in 1900 and converted into a museum that follows Admiral Nimitz Navy Career. The Nimitz Hotel is a part of the much larger Nation Museum of the Pacific War. Which includes a 40,000 square foot gallery that has displays covering World War II from its earliest cause through all major battles on land or sea.  Another piece of the Nation Museum of the Pacific War is the Pacific Combat Zone. The Pacific Combat Zone is 3 acres mostly outside with equipment used during war such as  tanks, air planes and an actual  PT Boat.

Just a few miles from Fredericksburg is Lukenbach, Texas of Waylon Jennings song fame: “Let's go to Lukenbach, Texas
with Waylon and Willie and the boys”. Not being fans of Country Music we weren’t impressed. The whole town only has about 6 buildings. Oh well, at least we can say that we have been to Lukenbach, Texas even if we didn’t see Waylon, Willie or the boys.

Two miles outside of Fredericksburg is the site of Fort Martin Scott. It was established in December of 1848 to protect the settlers from the Comanche Indians. However in May of 1847 the founders of Fredericksburg, the German Immigration Company signed a non-government treaty with the Comanche. Since neither side ever broke the treaty Fort Martin Scott became a supply depot and then was closed all together in December of 1853. There is only one remaining building from the original fort but, the site has undergone extensive reconstruction to give you an idea of what fort life was like in 1850. 

Original Fort Martin Scott building from 1849

Reconstructed Officer Quarters at Fort Martin Scott

Twenty miles from Fredericksburg is the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and next to that is the THE SAUER-BECKMANN LIVING HISTORY FARM a Texas State Park. The drive is through part of the Texas “wine country”. It is like driving through Napa in California. Mile after mile of vineyards and chateaus.

 THE SAUER-BECKMANN LIVING HISTORY FARM is restored to its early 1900s condition when the Beckmann family lived there. The interpreters in period costumes do the day-to-day activities of a 1900s Texas-German farm family; include cooking meals and caring for the farm animals. The buildings some dating back into the late 1800s are in great shape.

The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park is a section of President Johnson’s Ranch. They give you a cd to play as you drive around the ranch that gives a running narrative of what you are seeing. Sites include the Elementary School he went to, a reconstruction of the house he was born in, his grave site, and his home also know as the “Texas Whitehouse”.

President Johnson frequently held Cabinet Meeting under this old tree in front of his home.

The National Park Service gives tours of the first floor of the Texas Whitehouse. Unfortunately, they don’t allow pictures. However, our tour guide  was one of those absolutely great tour guides that we come across from time to time. From this wonderful tour we got a much better understanding of LBJ, the businessman, the Politian, how he worked and the “style” of the LBJ Presidency. He was a far more complicated person that I had ever imagined. The house is very modest by presidential standards and is mostly just frozen in time back to the late 1960s. One of the great touches of the tour is in the kitchen. The refrigerator doors are covered with pictures of and pictures drawn by the Johnson’s grandchildren; just like you would find in any grandmother’s kitchen.

This car has propellers on the back and can be driven right into a lake or river and it becomes a boat. The guide said President Johnson loved to bring heads of state out to his ranch and drive them into the river.

I remember LBJ as the “old guy” that was the President while I was in Junior High and High School. A poignant moment for me occurred when the tour guide pointed out the LBJ started his presidency at 55 and was 61 when he left office. As I rapidly approach my 60th birthday, he doesn’t seem to be nearly as old as I had remembered him.

As always there are many more pictures on the slideshow:

 

Our return to the West

This blog entry will end our 2010 trip travelogue as we describe our trip back to the west. Even though I am posting this in March of 2011. We did this trip in October of 2010.

Joliet, IL

After leaving Elkhart, Indiana our next stop was a visit with our oldest son Tim who lives in Aurora, Illinois. Like all urban areas it is is difficult to find RV Parks in the area. The closest RV Park to where Tim lives was at the Empress Casino in Joliet, it is a water and electric only RV Park but very nice. They were winding down the season so they had plenty of sites. They did tell us as we were registering that they were turning the water off for the season in a few days. Such is the problem of RVing in the Mid-west during October as RV Parks start closing for the year. A new year bird for us were Chimney Swifts buzzing around in their batty flight over head at the RV Park..

We Visited with Tim and Allen for a few days, Raider was so excited to see his big brother! Allen makes a great barbecue steak that we enjoyed one night. We all played Rock Band with the Beatles on their giant TV system (6' high & 7' wide!). However, we had to start heading west, but we enjoyed the time visiting. We had never been to Iowa, Nebraska or Kansas, so we decided to head to Texas by way of Iowa, Nebraska and Kanas.

You know how people says that Iowa, Nebraska and  Kanas are just flat with miles and mile of corn growing. They are right!

Kellogg, Iowa
Our first night stop was one night at Kellduff RV right next to the corn fields. Just as we set up camp, out comes the farmer to harvest the corn. We had a ring side seat to watch it being done, very interesting. Cobs and stalks get sucked up into the combine, corn is cut off the cob then spewed into a grain cart driving along side the combine to catch it and the remnants of everything is blown out the back of the combine. along with a lot of dust.

 

Lincoln, Nebraska
Stayed just one night, didn't even unhitch.

 
Salina, Kansas

We stayed 2 nights at the Salina KOA; we had to do laundry and get groceries. Salina is at the crossroad of I-70 and I-135, No, we didn’t see Dorothy or Toto and No Tornado Watches either!

 
Enid, OK
After weeks of every RV Park being near an Interstate we decided to stay the weekend at Camp Away RV Park, In Enid which is 30 miles from the nearest interstate. A nice and quiet older park outside town, no trains or highways nearby. Or so we thought, turns out there is a train that goes though Enid every night. Shortly after leaving Enid, we had one tire go very low in just minutes. Called Good Sam Roadside Assistance & had the spare mounted in it's place. Barely 150 miles later, as we're pulling into the ONLY rest area for hundreds of miles the right front trailer blew apart, all that was left was the side walls, the trailer was sitting on the rims! We had to purchase another tire since the spare was in use on the other side. $250 and a hour & half later, as an OK storm came barreling near by. We were on our way to have all of the tires replaced, it couldn't have waited another 220 miles across the Texas Panhandle to Farwell, TX and Tire Country!!!

 
Thankfully, there was a cheap off the road excuse of a campground a few miles from the rest area, we stopped the night in Texola, OK, just one mile from the Texas border.

 

Clovis, NM
We buzzed through the Texas panhandle, praying no more tire issues to Clovis, New Mexico. It is just a few miles from Farwell, Texas where Tire Country is, our favorite tire store. Lonnie the manager would take care of us! Next day drove the short drive to see Lonnie, he told us of the long line of complaints against Goodyear Marathons, some were pretty scary stories! We had all 5 tires on the trailer replaced with Bridgestone and had the wheel bearings repacked on the trailer. Lonnie is an RVer with a 5th wheel of his own, so when he gives advise he knows what he is talking about. We had Lonnie replace all the tires on our first trailer before going to Alaska and from the beginning planned to have Lonnie replace all of the tires on this trailer. Unfortunately, the Goodyear Marathons died 250 miles too soon. If you are think about buying new tires, go see Lonnie and his great crew.!

If you have Goodyear Marathons on your trailer, do a Google search on “Goodyear Marathons tread separation”  then REPLACE THEM you will see that it is only a question of when they will fail not if they will fail!!!
Thunderstorms, rain and wind delayed us in Clovis for 2 days.

Albuquerque, NM
Finally, the wind stopped blowing and the rain moved east, we made a beeline for Albuquerque We were going to stay until Monday when we heard that there was a nasty storm system coming in with 45mph winds, we left Sunday instead

Saturday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, notice the flag blowing straight out!

View out our back window onto the desert

Along I-10 in New Mexico

Williams, Arizona
We were going to stay the night in Holbrook, AZ, but it was around 1 PM too early to stop so Grant mushed on towards Flagstaff. Just as we approached Flagstaff, couldn't help but see a very dark cloud system over the town! At nearly 7,000 ft. in elevation, rain could turn to snow. Grant didn't want to learn how to drive the trailer in the snow, he mushed on further to the Williams KOA, a few miles from I-40. Along the way we saw the Camping World outside Flagstaff. It was the one that had just been blown apart from the tornado a week before.  All of the tangled wreckage of new trailers were plowed into a fenced area, the store was still closed. The drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Williams, Arizona was our longest distance day since we have been full-timing. 370 miles!  We hunkered down for a few days for the storms to blow over. Got the laundry caught up just as the power went out!

Scenes along I-40

 

Strom clouds over Flagstaff, Arizona

Pahrump, Nevada
We were considering staying for a few days and going up to the Grand Canyon but, we awoke to 16 degrees and snow in the very near by hills. When the sun returned we boogied for Nevada, driving over the new bridge in front of Hoover Dam. Kathy was petrified of the thought: the bridge is 1,075 feet above the Colorado River! Grant was excited to get a chance to see the Hoover Dam. Beautiful new highway Arizona 93 is paved, we were on the bridge before we knew it! The side walls of the bridge are over 5' high, you couldn't see down, so Grant  still hasn't seen the Hoover Dam! lol
Taking this route saved us many miles, and they have high profile trucks and trailers travel down the left inside lane for stability. We were in Las Vegas in no time and it was a clear day! Made it through the maze of highways in the city and sighed relief when we were finally on the outskirts. Just as we climbed up the mountain towards Pahrump, there were 2 dozen Desert Bighorn up on the cliff looking down on the road. Happened too fast, no pictures sorry! Up and over the top, dropped down the other side to our favorite Escapee Co-op RV Park of Pair-A-Dice. They had room for us to stay a month and unwind from our adventures! YES!

Brand new highway, a joy to be on a fresh smooth road!

We're on the bridge and can't even see Hoover Dam, it's below the right side of the bridge!

Las Vegas on a clear day... note the snow in October on Mt. Charleston on the left.

The view of Mt. Charleston from Pahrump, Nevada. Las Vegas is on the other side on Mt. Charleston.

More pictures of our trip West on the slideshow:

Back to our semi-regular schedule blogging!

We have been doing a lot of visiting and traveling in the past two weeks covering about 1,200 miles . There was so much to see and do around Fredericksburg that it is going to take some time to sort through the pictures and write about what we saw. However, the blog is getting too far behind so we are going to skip over our first 10 days in Fredericksburg and write up that story when we have some time. So, we will restart our travel blog right after we bought our new trailer.

Kathy wrote today’s blog:

After squaring away the new rig for added accessories, we went down to Kerrville to see our Montana Owners Club friends for the annual MOC Spring Rally. Since we weren’t sure we’d be in the area we hadn’t made reservations at the RV Park of the rally. This Spring Break thing is a serious event down here! Needless to say, they were already full. But, there was another RV Park a mile away that had room for us. So we “commuted” to the rally each day. We only wish we had the new Montana to show off! C’est la vie!!

A week later we were back at the Fredericksburg KOA and they had reserved a special site where they parked the new trailer next to the old one, with doors facing each other to save time. We could transfer our “stuff” with as few steps as possible. Who knew it would take 2 ½ days to make the transfer!! We filled up 3 large bags of clothes we haven’t worn in 2 years and another large bag of houseswares for the local thrift shop donation! Then we made trips to the dumpster to get rid of things we just didn’t need.

On the second day there we spent our first night in the new trailer! Right away I could tell the new mattress is a major improvement! Of course, there was the usual arranging and rearranging of things in the new rig. However, when we came back from groceries it was so nice to have a real pantry to stock! I had to squirrel away a lot of stuff under the dining room chairs in the old rig. “If you want the corn chips look in the DVD cabinet” was a case in point! Plus with a double wide fridge and freezer, I don’t have to cram food in and slam the door really quick to hold it all in!!! Amazing! We even have room for ice trays! The spice rack pantry is so handy beside the oven, just pull it out and every single cooking or baking item is right at your finger tips! A woman must have helped get that neat feature applied!

After the move was completed, we moved back to our favorite site in the pull through section, backing-up will come later! And then we just vegged out! With all of that “stair stepping”, (down the old rig’s steps, up the new rigs steps and back again!), R&R was the ticket! The trees had filled out with new leaves and wild flowers were popping up everywhere. Plus the birds were coming back, especially Cardinals, one of my favorites!

Texas Blue Bonnets

Finally we got brave and moved the new RV on down to Corpus Christi. I have been emailing a friend from Fairbanks Friends, Melinda, for years and she invited us down if we were in the area! The trip to Corpus Christi was beautiful as Spring had really broken out with wild flowers lining the road for miles and miles. Grant had to fight a strong head wind, all 240 miles down, though not quite a white knuckler ride. It was definitely a “two beer” happy hour to unwind.

Getting to meet Melinda and her husband, Frank, in person was such a treat! Putting a face with an email name makes it more real! They whisked us off to the best Texas BBQ we’d ever had at that point! All kinds of delicious smoked meats. Beef brisket, spare ribs, sausages and chicken!

Friday they took us for a drive around Corpus Christi, to see all of the gorgeous almost million dollar homes, (although if they were in California they would be multi-million dollar homes!), over to Rockport, a haven for wintering RVers, Aransas Pass and a delicious lunch in Port Aransas!! Grant tried a Po’ Boy with oysters for the first time.(It’s a hoagie or submarine sandwich with seafood.) I just had the shrimp tacos, but should have been braver and tried the Po’Boy with shrimp or crawfish!! Then back to the trailer to walk Raider and freshen up. 3 hours later we were off to one of their favorite seafood places near their home. They certainly don’t let you go hungry down here with the portions! Delicious! But just roll me to the car! LOL

Saturday we went over to their home, which is one of those great looking coastal houses up on really tall pillars! Living so close to the Gulf of Mexico and Laguna Madre demands you keep your home above the surf surge in case of hurricanes! Frank built it himself, what a handy man! He treated us to the BEST Texas BBQ when he cooked flank steaks on a mesquite wood fire! Oh man, he turned those into wonderful tasting fajitas! Melinda had homemade tortillas with all of the fixings! We had a feast! Great food with great new found friends! They have been to Alaska several times, too, so we had a common bond!

Sunday was Easter and we woke up to dense fog. Coming from the San Francisco Bay area we associate Fog with Cold. However, down there it was already in the mid-70’s by 7 AM! It is very weird to be in a warm fog!! Very trippy! The church was so close we could leave the big dually in the campground and walk to church! That afternoon we said our “Goodbyes” to Melinda and Frank, thanked them for treating us like celebrities! We truly had a wonderful time! They asked that the next time we plan on going up to Alaska to “please give us a call, we’ll hitch up the motorhome and caravan up with you!”

Kathy and Melinda

Monday we headed northeast towards Livingston, Texas. You’re probably wondering: where? Since we started full timing, we have used the Escapee RV Club as our mailing service and their headquarters is in Livingston. “Maybe we should see our home town?!” Well, it was over 320 miles from Corpus Chrisit, a little more than we like to travel. So we stopped for the night north of Houston in a town called Spring and stayed at the Rayford Crossing RV Resort. A very nice RV park with lots of pull through sites! YAY!!! I wouldn’t mind staying here again! The next morning we were off to Livingston, about 80 miles north.

Livingston, Texas

We have come to learn that this is the Piney Woods area of Texas. Miles and miles of pine forests so lush and deep! Azalea bushes in everybody’s yard were exploding! The Escapee RV Park for travelers is one of the nicest Escapee Parks we’ve been to! Nice big sites with lawns and trees for shade! We got one of the easiest back in sites available. (Wink, wink! There was a little strip of grass right behind the gravel leading from the campground road, so we made it a pull through! Baby steps with the new rig, you veteran full timers!!! Baby steps!J) It is a huge compound!

Birding Note: We had the pleasure of Cardinals and Blue Jays serenading us, not to mention the Carolina Wren and Red Bellied Woodpecker for added sounds! With the onset of Spring, all of the tall trees are so beautifully leafed out, which of course, makes bird watching all that more difficult.

Wednesday was the usual grocery shopping and laundry day. Then Thursday we took the tour of the Escapee facility and got to know the whole park. It started with Kay and Joe Peterson, who were the first pioneers of full time RVing in 1978. They found out that there were not too many resources available for people who wanted to try this life style, so they started the Escapees RV Club. They have Escapades which are rallies held twice a year, filled with seminars on the RV life and how do to things properly. From safety to proper equipment, they thought of everything. Now the Escapees Club is so huge with thousands of members. There are all kinds of interest groups called “Birds of a Feather” or BOF for short! We had an in depth tour of the mail service building and were impressed with the state of the art sorting machines. I’m sure a few small town post offices wished they had! Especially fun was meeting Kelly, our personal mail service rep! We just have to email her and she gets all of our mail together, it’s out the door to the post office the very next day! I mean we even got several packages all of the way up in Alaska on our trip 2 years ago! Little did we know there is an army of about 30 employees that do all of the sorting!!

The tour continued with a trolley ride of all the permanent sites and semi-permanent sites, plus areas they wish to expand to in the near future. You get on a waiting list for those areas much like you do in their other parks.

But we were pleasantly surprised to actually meet Kay and Joe Peterson outside their beautiful home! We had seen them before at the 2007 Escapade, but that was also with a few hundred other Escapees!! They are no longer traveling but are still spry and enthusiastic on the RV Life!

Friday it was time to say good bye to our “home town” and head south east to Beaumont, Texas about 70 miles away. It was time to do some serious birding, especially if we call ourselves “BirdingRVers”. Well, one of our true expert birding friends from San Jose has transferred to the Beaumont area and we just had to hook up with John for some serious Texas birding!

Saturday started out sunny and clear as John picked us up and headed down towards the coast, east of Galveston. The skies kept getting darker and darker! As we’re birding in one of the High Island Audubon Sanctuary I asked him, “Is that the pounding waves on the beach or thunder that I hear?!” He said, “probably thunder.” Oh goody, this is a first for us: birding in a thunderstorm. (We rarely have them in San Jose!) Just our luck, a bus load of birding enthusiasts had just unloaded from the Galveston Feather Fest, a spring bird watching rally! So everywhere we were we bumped into more birders out to see what migrants had literally just dropped in from their migration north! The thunder kept getting louder so we high tailed it back to the car as the rain began! Off we went to see shore birds; they don’t care if it’s raining. Lots of Black Skimmers, Plovers, Red Egrets, sandpipers and various gulls were all around. We could easily watch them from the car while it rained, so I broke out the picnic basket and we had lunch. Shortly after that the rain stopped and we ventured out for better looks of the birds. I kept looking towards the gulf and noticing another band of clouds with thunder rumbling in the distance. Hmm is this a second storm wave heading towards us?

John thought of another sanctuary that might have birds, so off we headed for that spot. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ike really wiped out the area of trees, moved entire sand dunes across the highway so now there are unobstructed views of the gulf! It tore down homes for miles! The plants are slowly recovering and the reconstruction is coming along, but the great tall trees are gone! Birds depend on these for shelter and food. He then remembered another place where we saw a rookery for the Roseate Spoonbill and Snowy Egrets. With all of the hurricane damage, proper trees for nest building are prime real estate! You can’t help but giggle when you hear the Spoonbill, it sounds so comical like they are gargling or burping!

Spoonbill & Egret Colonies

Roseate Spoonbill in flight

We saw birds literally drop out of the sky and into the trees and bushes at this point. One of our Life Birds was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo! He looked so exhausted from his wild flight across the stormy gulf that his wings were drooping as he sat in the bushes catching his breath and a bite to eat! All of a sudden there were warblers, Blue Grosbeaks, Indigo Buntings and lots of bright red Summer Tanagers and Scarlet Tanagers everywhere!! We acquired at least 4 new life birds in an hour! Thankfully, the storm took another course and the sun was out as if it had never rained!

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Sunday, John and Grant did another 7 hour Birding day at Sabin Woods and the area around John’s house. Kathy stayed home to catch up on the laundry and write a draft of the blog entry. Grant picked up 7 more life birds.

After Birding all day we went out to dinner with John, his wife Michelle and their 3 year old twins. It was a very entertaining. I don't know how anyone can survive twins! However 3 year olds are cute no matter what they are doing.

The 11 Life Birds for the weekend were: Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Brown Thrasher, Wood Thrush, Carolina Chickadee, Fish Crow, Prothonotary Warbler, Worm-eating Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, Orchard Oriole and Brown-headed Nuthatch.

On to Florida …

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading for this important announcement

Almost three weeks since our last blog! All I can say we have been busy. We spent 10 days in Fredericksburg, Texas. What a great area to explore and I started a blog about it weeks ago, but we have been too busy to get back to it. Hopefully, I can complete is soon. After Fredericksburg we went to Kerrville, Texas only about 20 miles south of here to attend the Montana Owner’s National Spring Rally. More very busy days.

However our BIG NEWS is that while we were in Fredericksburg we decided to replace our 2007 Montana 5th wheel with a larger 2010 Montana 3400RL 5th wheel. So after Kerrville we returned to Fredericksburg for a week to move into our new home.

After two plus years on the road we really needed more room and of course, having now lived in a 5th wheel since selling our house in September of 2007, we have a better idea of what works for us and what doesn't. It also doesn’t hurt that with the many miles we have pulled the trailer we are much more comfortable with the idea of pulling an even larger trailer. Out new 5th wheel trailer is about 3 feet longer and 1,500 pounds heavier than our previous one. It also has a 4th slide out which adds a lot of room.

Here are some pictures of the outside of the new trailer:

This link will take you to the Montana Website and you can see the floor plan and pictures of the interior.

Hopefully, I will get back to the “regular scheduled” blog posting of our travels soon.

Pancho Villa and Sonora Caverns

 

Caverns of Sonora

After two months in Arizona and one more storm, on a perfect day we left Benson, headed east on I-10 to Deming, New Mexico. I had once heard Deming described as a “windy desert town” and that pretty much sums it up. While in Deming 2 years ago we stayed at the Escapee’s Dream Catcher RV Park, because Escapee Parks are always friendly and cheap we stayed there again.

Entering New Mexico

Part of the reason for our stop in Deming was to visit the town of Columbus, New Mexico and the Pancho Villa State Park. Columbus is located about 30 miles south of Deming and only 3 miles from Mexico. On March 9, 1916, soldiers led by Pancho Villa attacked the military camp and the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 18 Americans. This was the only ground invasion of the continental U.S. since 1812. As a result of the raid the US sent Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing and 10,000 troops on a  500-mile pursuit of Villa into Mexico. Eleven months later the US entered World War I and recalled General  Pershing and his troops from Mexico for redeployment in France. In the 11 months in Mexico the US troops never encountered or even saw Pancho Villa. This expedition into Mexico is significant because it was the last use of the Calvary by the US Army and the first time the Army used airplanes, trucks and cars in the field. The Pancho Villa State Park has a small museum with a replica plane of the era and a few cars and trucks used in the pursuit of Pancho Villa.

1916 Four Wheel Drive Truck

 

1916 Armored Truck

After Deming we headed east. Back in 2008 we had skirted the northern part of El Paso and then headed north to Carlsbad Caverns. This time we drove through El Paso and headed east. Everything from that point on will be new country to us until who knows when.

Montana Owner friends Michael and Renee were traveling about a week in front of us and in an email mentioned that one of their stops would be the Caverns of Sonora. We had never heard of them and also can never pass up a cavern. West Texas is big and it took us a couple of days to get to Sonora, Texas. If you look at a map you will see that Sonora is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere; the caverns are 16 miles from town and really beyond nowhere.

The Caverns of Sonora is a “living” cavern. That means that formations are still being made, which makes it is warm and very humid inside. This cavern is privately owned and doesn’t have all of the rules that Kartchner Caverns had, so we could take our cameras. Also the tour group was only 6 people, one whom had last been in this cavern over 50 years ago with his high school caving club.  The Caverns of Sonora  can best be described as “intimate”. The “rooms” in Sonora Caverns tend to be very tall and skinny. We have never been in a cave where you got so close to the formations; you had to be careful in some spots not to brush them as you walked by.

 

As you can see in the above pictures the walls are encrusted with formations.

Some of the more delicate formations in the cavern.

Kathy says that this is the best caverns we have ever been in. I think that Carlsbad Cavern wins just by its enormity, but this is undoubtedly has the most diverse formations we have ever seen in a single cavern.

The slideshow below has many more pictures from inside the cavern.