Travel dates: July 15-16, 2017
When the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX popped up one month in our See America calendar (affiliate link), we thought it looked so cool that we rearranged an entire leg of our summer trip to make time to go see it and attend one of its Star Parties with telescope viewing.
But then the clouds came. Thunderstorms were in the forecast for our Star Party night, and, even if the storms held off, it was way too cloudy to see any stars. The observatory offers alternate activities on nights without clear skies, but that’s not the same. And, we decided, not worth keeping Abe up hours past his bedtime for. So no Star Party for us. But we did enjoy a nice evening at Davis Mountains State Park and a few hours the next morning at nearby Fort Davis National Historic Site, so our trip rearranging was not totally wasted.
We were worried about the drive from Brantley Lake State Park in New Mexico to Davis Mountains State Park, because I’d read in a few places that 285 south of Carlsbad was absolutely terrible. But there didn’t seem to be a reasonable alternative route, so we took our chances, and….it was really not so bad. Not the best maintained road in the world, but we didn’t have any major problems. And once you get into farther down into Texas, the drive gets really lovely.
This picture doesn’t really show you the loveliness, but anyway, we stopped at a pull off area and the kids climbed on some rocks.
A full hook-up site at Davis Mountains is only $25/night, but that’s in addition to the daily entrance fee of $6 per adult (free for kids 12 and under). We have two kids over 12, so that’s an extra $24/night for us. If you’re going to be spending much time in Texas State Parks, it makes a lot of sense to buy a park pass; otherwise, the cheap camping fees get not so cheap pretty quickly.
We found the campground a little tricky to navigate (I think we went the wrong way around the loop our site was in and had to figure out a place to turn around), but our site was lovely.
There’s no wifi and we had pretty much zero Verizon signal here (I walked around for 10 minutes and finally managed to get enough of a signal to make a phone call), so prepare to be unplugged.
There’s a lot to do in the park if you have more time than we had. Our site was right around the corner from this interpretive center:
There’s hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, ranger programs, stargazing, and geocaching in the park, and a number of local attractions a short drive away.
We only had one night, though, and, in the absence of a star party, we decided to spend it on one of the park’s trails. Except Abe was kind of exhausted and grumpy (another reason to skip the star party), so in the end we all drove up the scenic Skyline Drive and checked out the old CCC building up there:
Then the older kids and I hiked back to the campground via the CCC trail, while Dave and Abe drove back down.
The CCC trail is 1.7 miles; I thought it would be a really easy all downhill hike, but it turned out to be the sort of trail that goes up and down over rolling hills a lot, so it was a little more challenging than I expected. I got a little nervous that the sun would go down and we’d be eaten by a mountain lion, but this did not happen.
And there were some very pretty views of the hills:
The next morning we headed five minutes down the road to see Fort Davis National Historic Site before check-out time. There’s actually a hiking trail from the park to the NPS site, which would have been a fun way to get there had we had more time.
Fort Davis’s job was to protect travelers along the San Antonio-El Paso Road in the late 19th century, and there are an impressive number of structures still standing today. Many of them have been restored and furnished so you can get an idea of what life was like in a frontier fort.
We spent a couple of hours here, which was enough to see most of the site and complete the (very well done; set up like a scavenger hunt) Junior Ranger book.
We checked out the exhibits in the visitors center:
And then headed out to explore.
Among the restored buildings are the barracks:
….a store:
A couple of different officers’ houses. I can really appreciate how bold the Victorians were with pattern mixing:
In one of the houses, we were talking to a Ranger, and she brought out an old pinball machine for us to try out. So how pinball used to work is that you would pull the knob to start the ball and then watch helplessly as it fell down to the bottom:
There’s also a hospital that’s currently mid-restoration (or was in summer of 2017, at least):
And if you get tired of restored buildings, there are always ruins and pretty views of west Texas to keep you occupied:
Oh! And these adorable little red bugs were everywhere!
One of the rangers told us that they’re red velvet mites, and that they come out after it rains. “Be careful where you step!” she added. Which was a lot of pressure, because they were all over the place.
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