And so we are off on a short road trip. I really was anxious to get back on the road. Traveling is lots of fun. Ginny likes it too. That is a good thing. We are heading out to Big Bend to start with. Then on to Fort Davis, Monahans, Roswell, White Sands and Las Cruces for a wedding.

Today was a driving day. Our objective was Fort Stockton which is just north of Big Bend. You have to remember that Texas is a big state. We drove for almost nine hours on Interstate 10 and were still in Texas. Still have 256 miles to El Paso and Port Arthur is 625 miles in the opposite direction. The last mile marker eastbound on Interstate 10 is 880, the largest in the US. Second place is Interstate 5 in California with 796. There is some trivia for you.

This part of Texas lies on the Permian Basin, one of the largest oil producing locations in the world. According to the hotel desk person, Fort Stockton is doing well with the oil production. His hotel is full up almost every night. One of the things that is peculiar about this part of Texas is the drive through liquor stores. Remember that movie Urban Cowboy? They had a scene in a drive through in the Houston area.

We arrived in town about 5 pm. One thing that was on the objective list for this place was Paisano Pete, a statue of a roadrunner. We dragged the gut down town and found the statue. Of course we need a picture in front of it. Unfortunately, the light was lousy, but we added another photo to the collection of the two of us somewhere. I think I am going to have to go back and pull all those out and make a pbase gallery. It would be interesting, at least to me.

One thing that is going to be interesting is that it is raining. Normal rainfall out here is about 13 inches. If it rains we will go to plan B which is plan A with rain gear.