Del Rio, Texas

As I’ve mentioned in my last two posts, Big Bend National Park is huge! We drove for about two hours from our campsite at the Rio Grande Village Campground to get to the Persimmon Gap Visitor Center by the northern exit/entrance to the national park. It was another two hours until we reached our destination of Del Rio, TX. As you can see from the picture below there is not much out here. Driving out here felt very much like driving in our native state of Nevada. A whole lot of scrub brush and a long, long distance between things.

On the northern edge of town you will find the Amistad National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service (NPS). “An oasis in the desert, Amistad National Recreation Area consists of the US portion of the International Amistad Reservoir. Amistad, whose name comes from the Spanish word meaning friendship, is best known for excellent water-based recreation, camping, hiking, rock art viewing, and its rich cultural history.” – NPS

The visitor center is very hard to find, we had to ask a local for directions. While there are many signs directing you to the various recreational points around the water, the only sign for the visitor center is this one in front of the nondescript brown building about four miles north of downtown.

We spent a couple of days in this town taking care of some daily chores that still need to be done when on the road in an RV – grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, paying bills, you know, all the fun stuff that still needs to be done no matter where we go.

We were here the first week of March, just a few weeks after Texas had a devastating winter freeze. “The 2021 Texas power crisis involved three severe winter storms sweeping across the United States on February 10–11, 13–17, and 15–20, a massive electricity generation failure in the state of Texas, and resultant shortages of water, food, and heat. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, some for several days.” – Wikipedia. It was here in Del Rio that we first began noticing all the dead palm trees. We continued to see palm trees in this condition throughout southern Texas and along the Gulf Coast into Louisiana.

On the way out of town we stopped by a small Mexican bakery to satisfy a sudden donut craving. This place was tiny but the donuts were delicious!

Our next stop, Medina River Winery, a Harvest Host about two hours away in Castroville, TX.

This was our first experience with a Harvest Host location that offered hook ups. We decided to use their power connection for the small fee of $10. We have begun hearing that some hosts have set up their sites to offer connections for RVs. Expect to be charged a small fee for the use of the connections.

This winery had some pretty good wine. We enjoyed sampling what they had and walked away buying a couple of bottles. It was here that Joel came to the realization that a “free night stay” isn’t really free if you end up spending $50-$100 on wine before you leave. Oops, too late, I bought the membership for a year. Oh, and he decided a long time ago that he would rather I plan the trips so, I’m pretty sure that we will have quite a few more “free night stays”.

The parking lot where we stayed wasn’t nearly as impressive as the view we had from the parking lot. If you stand here and turn around you will see the wide open green fields of the winery.

And at night the sunset was incredible. At first I thought it was just the wine that made me think the sunset was great, but no, it really was just amazing.

We only stayed here one night but it made us happy.