Fort Stockton,
Texas,
United States
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Fort Stockton is on the range area in the western portion of Texas. It appears to be mainly a stopover for RVers with many pulling in at dusk and then leaving the next morning. This is what we intend to do as well. However, before we left Florida, we won a Sotheby's wine encyclopedia that lists all of the great wineries of the world by region. In addition to the various grand crus of France, the AOCs of Italy, there is also a very brief section on Texas wineries and one of them,
Ste. Genevieve, is located in Fort Stockton. After we got set up, I went into the campground office to ask about the winery. It turns out they do not have a tasting room, but the little café at the
campground served their wines and they sold them in the camp store. The lady in the office offered to give me a taste and popped over to the café and came back with two bottles and two glasses. The chardonnay was good! I bought two bottles and headed back to the RV with my find. A wine tasting in the middle of the Texas prairie in an RV campground, definitely a first. We went into the local grocery store and they sold the wines as well for a very reasonable price. We stocked up since I doubt we'll see these wines anywhere else.
There were prickly pear cacti
Prickly Pear Cactus
all over the park with ripe fruit and the birds were having a feast. We decided we'd like to try one too and discovered why they're called prickly pears! While the cactus itself has large easily seen thorns, the fruit has these infuriatingly small ones that you don't realize are there until you pick the stupid thing! After getting the tweezers out and extracting the thorns from both of our fingers, we cut the fruit open. What a disappointment! The entire center was seeds with only a thin layer of flesh around the inside of the skin. To top it off, it didn't even taste very good. We'll definitely leave them to the birds.
On to Las Cruces.
