Texas Travel and Letterboxing

Before leaving Fort Stockton, we discovered our first two letterboxes on this trip. The first one was hidden near Paisano Pete, the town's very large Road Runner Mascot.
And the second was hidden near the Fort Stockton Cemetery. We learned quite a bit about old Fort Stockton, too. It was great to be finding letterboxes again, especially in a new state!

When we left Fort Stockton we traveled east on I-10. I love I-10. The speed limit is 80 mph and there you virtually have the road to yourself. We saw lots of wildlife along the road, too, including 2 javelinas and a few deer. All along the western part of I-10 we saw to our left on every mesa top, these huge wind power turbines. It got us to talking about alternative fuel and power sources.


We left I-10 to head into the Texas Hill Country on Hwy 290 where we saw many goat, sheep and herb farms, along with wild deer browing alongside the roads. We drove through an adorable little German ethnic town called Fredericksburg during their annual Crawfish Festival. Of course, we didn't stop, what with us having a pet crawfish at home (Poor Lobster Mobster!). But we will have to come back here one day. Such a unique little town filled with shopping, antique stores, Victorian and stone quarried buildings and history..Click here.

Also, along this road is where we also started seeing the gas prices drop dramatically! It was the first time since leaving New Mexico (Paying $3.49 a gallon) that we could pay under $3.00 per gallon!

We stopped off in Austin, TX around 5:30pm to hunt for a couple letterboxes. We found 2 at the oldest and largest cemetery in Austin, Oakwood Cemetery. It was a beautiful, old lush green park-like setting. We found two letterboxes here, beautifully handcarved. The first one was of a bust of the twice Governor of Texas, Elisha Marshall Pease. Here is his "Leaning Tower of Pease" grave marker.We also found another box with a beautiful stamp of the old Stone Cottage inside the cemetery. As we drove around we enjoyed watching a red fox prowling among the gravestones, too.
We finally arrived in The Woodlands around 9:00pm on Saturday night, surprising our friends, who weren't expecting us until Sunday! We made some great time and saw some really interesting things, and enjoyed some letterboxing, too!