Judge Roy Bean

We went to the "town" of Langtry which is about 60 miles west of Del Rio. This is where Judge Roy Bean lived -- the only law "west of the Pecos". There is a restored opera house and a saloon that he had built. The opera house was actually where he lived -- not sure why he called it an opera house. We walked through a really nice cactus garden that showed off all of the different trees, bushes and cacti found in this one area. Judge Roy Bean's buildings are free to tour and so is the cactus garden. There is also a visitor center, souvenir shop, a few houses and a small bare bones RV park and thats about it for Langtry. I thought Langtry's Visitor Center was as interesting as the restored buildings and it also had the best visitor information for the whole state of Texas that I have seen so far. Big Bend National Park is about another two hundred miles west of Langtry. There really is nothing much in between Del Rio and Big Bend except these tiny little towns like Langtry.

We had a short cold snap and actually saw a few flurries in the air. You should have heard the locals complaining about the cold. The possibility of snow (even flurries) was news worthy for days. The only thing we thought was newsworthy was the power outages we experienced. The power has gone out twice in the area including our campground and of course it hit when it was the coldest. We can run our furnace on battery power so we managed to stay warm. This also means no water so we have learned to keep water in our tank as back up.

So far we like it here. I found the library -- I have a Texan library card now. We are still trying the local restaurants -- slowly -- we don't go out to eat very often but haven't found anything good yet. Luckily, I really don't have to cook all of the time. There is a couple staying at the campground that make a little money on the side by cooking up breakfast twice a week -- eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy and either french toast or pancakes, coffee and juice all for a "donation".