Del Rio to Bracketville to Camp Wood

I forgot to mention a couple of things in the last post... when we were in Comstock we noticed that there was a big Border Patrol compound. Apparently there are more than 100 officers assigned to the BP station that regularly patrol the area. The store owner whom we chatted with for a while told us that the BP offices have done a good job of stopping the illegal immigrants and drug 'mules' from coming through the Comstock area and that the traffic has moved north to Sanderson (the place we stayed the night before). Unbeknownst to us, Sanderson is one of the busiest traffic spots along this section of the border...

A few days prior to reaching Del Rio, I had contacted a friend of mine (Rainey) who lives in Fredericksburg. He generously and graciously offered to pick us up in Camp Wood, 100 + miles from his house and host us for a couple of days. We just needed to reach Camp Wood which was 80 miles from Del Rio.

When we were going through Del Rio we stopped at the Bike Shop to pick up a spare tube for Taran's bike. We had run out of tubes 4 days ago and had our fingers crossed the whole time. We were not afraid of punctures cause we could repair them, but for some reason the valve stems had a tendency to break and those can't be fixed. We had tried in Alpine to buy a tube, but they did not stock the right kind. We were told that Del Rio would have them...guess what... they did not. There was nothing we could do but cross our fingers and head out.

Bracketville

The wind was very stiff and the road was very poor. It was very bumpy and somewhat hilly. It felt like a much longer ride then only 35 miles. We stayed at a former historical army base that is now a gated community for "leisure living". http://www.fortclark.com/ I was hoping it would have lots of cool amenities, but as it turns out because we were 'tenting' we were not entitled to use the rec room nor the bathrooms in the main building. We were sent to the tenting site that had cold showers only... With the nights getting warm, we debated whether to put up the fly. We were glad we did cause it rained during the night. As we knew we were being picked up by Rainey, we did not stock up on our regular fare of oatmeal, raisins and apples. Rather, we had purchased Mini-Wheats and went to the local store and bought milk and sat in the cafeteria type place at the store and ate breakfast...

Camp Wood 60 miles

We stocked up on lots of water for the trip to Camp Wood because there were no services in between. It was a hot 97 degrees cause the humidity was way up too. We were sweating bullets. About 30 miles into the trip, Taran got a flat... his rear valve stem had broken. We spent 30 minutes trying to fix and patch the stem to no avail. Traffic was very light...maybe one car per 30 minutes. I flagged down a passing truck...and they stopped. It turned out to be a lovely couple from near Camp Wood that were willing to help us out. We loaded up our gear and off we went to the Cooksey RV site. They told us many horror stories about people dying out in the heat. The nearest Bike Shop that 'may' have the proper tube was another 120 miles away! We had arranged for Rainey to pick us up at the RV site the next morning.

The Cooksey RV park was very nice. They had a river running right beside the park and it had reasonable amenities. Taran was able to trade a couple of books in the Rec Room. While I was chatting with the camp host he told me that it was possible a thunderstorm might roll in. This area had not seen any rain in 8 months and were desperate for it. He said that it was unlikely that it would reach the camp, but we could camp out in the shower room if we wanted to avoid the storm. We were lucky that we did. It rained 2 and a half inches and the lightening was less than a mile away. The only issue was that the cockroaches came out to play at night!

The next morning Rainey and his Dad came and picked us up. We drove back to his place. And what a place it is!! It's a house that was built in 1906 with 11.6 foot ceilings, hardwood floors and a lot of TLC sitting on 8 acres in the middle of the city. It's an amazing home/property. He's got 5 or 6 projects on the go, but the place is incredible...

The adventure continues!