Massive update!
So on the 19th (Day 10) I left Austin, TX, westward bound; I headed up over the hills and through the scrublands of west Texas. It’s an absolutely desolate place. Not aided by the fact that the endless barren fields and desert meant huge clouds of dust and sudden powerful gusts of wind. The objective for the day was San Angelo State Park in San Angelo, TX. After a paltry 200 miles and three and a half hours I arrived in town and not wanting to set up camp yet at the park I found the only open bar town, “The Penny Taphouse”. Does this blog have a theme yet…? At 3 in the afternoon the place a was empty except for one gentleman at the bar and the bartender. As it turns out the bartender was born and raised in Baltimore and had ended up in San Angelo for school. She liked the town enough that she decided to stay and co-owns this bar and another in town….What a small world. The other person in the bar was an Army Captain who was an EOD Training Specialist, he was waiting to catch his flight out of town to begin a year long deployment in Honduras. Very interesting guy, grew up in a small town in west-texas; his wife and children are going to live in Philadelphia with his wife’s parents while he’s on deployment. I think the starkest thing he said to me is how his perspective on the world has changed and how much Texas has changed since he grew up there. His over-arching comment was that he is continually surprised at how his higher education degree(s) have liberalized him AND the fact that whenever he visits home in Texas; just how much political ideologies have changed. “It seems like every time I come home, people are more and more accepting of change”. As I work backwards through these blogs, there are some other very interesting observations about Texas politics. After this gentleman left for his flight I ended up talking to four guys who came in after their respective shifts at the local hospital as HVAC mechanics. They had all worked construction jobs before their jobs at the hospital. Most of them had been there their entire lives, and had rarely left town. I asked them why they had decided to stay here and what their favorite thing about San Angelo. Two of them contemplated the question seriously and came back with essentially the same answer of; “Well….You’re born here and you just sort of wake up one day and realize you’re an old man.” Certainly food for thought. eventually checked out of the bar after a few hours. Camped in a lovely spot at San Angelo State Park for the night.
