Eclipse Day!!!

Good morning, my friends. Maybe I've never said this before, but I give names to all of our trips. Mainly, it's to create a folder for storing images on my computer. Every trip has its own folder with a bunch of sub-folders for different locations. This trip has been given the name "Eclipse Trip." Our trip to Alaska next year...50th state, 50th year of marriage...has been dubbed the Fifty-Fifty Trip. I hope that doesn't mean our chances of actually going are only 50-50. But anyway...all of that to say that the day the trip was named for has arrived. The rest of the trip is just gravy.

So we hung around Georgetown until early afternoon yesterday. Smitty got out for another walk.

He nibbled a little more of this excellent Texas grass, and then he took a snort snooze in his catio.

Sadie got in one more delicious morning sunbath.

If you'll recall we had a problem with the slide topper roller at our last stop, and we had to remove it until it can be repaired. It is 13 feet long, and so we had it stowed under the RV until we were ready to go again. For going down the road, we brought it inside and laid it on the floor. Mike caught this stowaway before he could get loose in the RV. Yikes!

We're with my friend, Judy, now. Judy is a PhD entomologist. She tells us that the scorpions in Texas have a bad sting, but they won't make you sick. I'd still just as soon avoid them completely.

So after liberating the scorpion to the outdoors, we were ready to take off. We're in the part of Texas known as "Hill Country," and it's very green here.

We saw a few barns.

There is both farming and ranching in this part of the world.

Too bad about the pole in this next one. 

We saw some Texas longhorn cattle...none that I could photograph, but here's a picture from when we took our USA Perimeter tour back in 2017-18. This one is part of the official "Texas Longhorn Herd," and we saw him in Palo Duro Canyon.

What we mostly saw yesterday were very old and very small towns with buildings that appeared as if time forgot them.

We could have taken I-35 for most of our trip, but we veered off onto TX-317 early on, and then finished up on TX-22.

Part of the reason I prefer smaller highways is the opportunity to see some of these smaller places.

This town is nearing "ghost town" status. This whole row of structures was for sale.

Texas has a lot of small counties. The map of Texas is a checkerboard of small counties.

I mention this because it seems almost every town we drive through is the county seat of something, and so we've seen a lot of old courthouses. I've taken pictures of some, but they don't always turn out very well. I forget which town we were passing through for this one yesterday.

I barely caught this as we drove by, but I wanted you to see the clock tower.

I didn't post these pictures at the time I took them, but just to belabor the point about the counties and the courthouses, this is the courthouse for Jeff Davis County in Fort Davis.

This is the county seat for Presidio County in Marfa...just about 20 miles down the road. Wait...maybe I didn't take its picture. Here's one I found in the public domain:

(Image credit: "Presidio County Courthouse" by nan palmero is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Getting back to yesterday's drive, it was uneventful until shortly after we crossed over this dam into the little town of Whitney. That's not a bridge in the image below. We were driving on top of the dam there.

Looking out Mike's window, we could see Lake Whitney.

Here's the view from my window. Not sure what river they're damming up here.

From there our nav unit took us on a wild goose chase, happily announcing, "Your destination is on the right." Looking right, there was nothing but shrubbery. We were in an old neighborhood on a narrow dirt road, and there was no way to get turned around. We thought we might have to back up for about a mile, but then figured out to back into someone's driveway. I was directing Mike from outside the truck, when I noticed a 60-ish man wearing a cowboy hat. I yelled that we were just turning around in his driveway. He approached and told us we could go down the road a little ways to a place where there was enough room to turn around. Phew! Thanks! (And in Texas, I'm just glad he didn't come out with guns blazing. It happens.)

So all's well that ends well, and we finally found where we were supposed to be. My friend, Judy, arrived shortly after us. As with many small places along the path of totality, the campground has created a bit of a shindig for the eclipse. There are RVs here, but also a lot of tent campers and live music. When we could finally see the sky this morning, there were a few wispy clouds and blue sky. About half an hour later (now) it's heavy cloud cover. We won't be seeing anything unless the sky clears. Oh well. There's still room for hope, but not much. We can only wait for the daylight to turn to darkness to know if we'll see anything at all. Keeping our fingers crossed.

But right now, I need to get some breakfast going. It's hard to do with my fingers crossed, but I'll get 'er done somehow. Maybe if we all cross our fingers and wish real hard, we can make it happen. So get busy out there, my friends. Fingers crossed. Wishful thinking. The time grows short.