Driving along Hwy 21 into East Texas

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Trip Start Mar 04, 2009 Trip End Mar 18, 2009 Next
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  Crockett, Texas, United States
Wednesday, March 4, 2009

    Wednesday, crack o'dawn.  I got up early so that I could say good by to my Precious, who is still a working girl.  After she left, I finished packing and loaded up the Excursion.  I've been getting stuff together for the last 6 weeks so there wasn't all that much to do.  I had to dawdle for a little while so that the rush hour traffic would ease up.  My first leg of the trip involved driving I35 to San Marcos.  Lots of morning traffic. I pulled out with the trailer at 8:30, and the traffic was light.

    Back when I was a working stiff, I worked with a guy who also had a trailer.  On one occasion we were talking about going East, and he had told me that he used Hwy 21 to start out with.  I knew the hwy up to Bryan, but not beyond.  I decided to use it based on his reccomendation, and because I wanted to avoid the interstates if I could.  I don't drive State highways very often.  They are mostly narrow two lane highways where shoulders are optional.  I knew part of the highway from our days of driving to Bryan to see the Aggie Band play at halftime.  I had divided my trip to Memphis into 3 legs; home to Crockett, Crockett to Arkadelphia, AR, and Arka.. to West Memphis, AR.  None of the legs were over 300 miles, and that gets me to the next destination in 3-5 hours.  I've learned that towing for any longer gets me road weary and I'm not as alert as I need to be with a 10,000# trailer behind me.

    The day was pleasant; clear skies, temps in the upper 60's/lower 70's, and a tailwind.  I rolled my window down and enjoyed the scenery.  Being alone, I could crank my tunes and let my mind drift a bit.  I passed through Old Dime Box, followed a mile later by Dime Box.  Neither one was large enough to qualify as a village, so I wondered what had happened to cause the split - did the kids grow up and want to leave home or did some of the families vote republican ... hmmm makes you wonder.  Leaving Bastrop I drove through the lost pines forest, a favorite part of the trip.  The car filled with a fresh pine scent, very nice.  I passed through farm and ranch land, and smelled fresh grass - maybe hay - and a faint aroma of manure.  Both were nice for a city boy who had worked on a ranch in the last century.  I passed through Bryan and into unfamiliar areas.  I went through another community named North Zulch.  As I was driving North, I wondered why there was no South Zulch.  We always wonder why people had decided to live in a certain area.  I learned that North Zulch's primary industry was a nearby State Prison, and the one that is home for Death Row inmates.  I wondered if the town's lights used to dim back when we used electricity to end the lives of the unforgivable.  I also passed through a place called Midway.  Midway to/from where? No clue.

Getting closer to Crockett I saw Cottonwoods in bloom, and the Red Bud Trees had been blooming all along the way.  The area also had a bunch of cattle ranches with breeding stock having lunch in their pastures.  Driving to the RV Park the surrounding area was very pretty, and I had hopes of spending the night in a pleasant setting.  Wrong! I turned into the park to find that about an acre of a local rancher's land had been cleared and had been filled with gravel.  The advertised concrete slabs turned out to be concrete ramps [two strips for your tires to sit on].  The strips were about 8-9 inches too narrow, so the right tires of my trailer were half off the strip.  There were only three other campers there; staying in very old trailers.  The place did not have a staffed office.  You had to call and tell a voice that you had arrived, who would then tell you how much money to drop through the mail slot.  The advertised free wi-fi was nowhere to be found, and I was within 20 yards of the transmission tower.  When the voice arrived to give me my receipt I told her of my problems with the wi-fi.  She pointed over to the building with the mail slot, and asked if I saw the red button on a side wall.  Now this red button was the same thing you see on the walls of a gas station that's used for an emergency shutoff.  The voice told me that I should of gone over and pressed it to reset the wi-fi.  Well, the button was not labeled and I wondered who would press a red button not knowing what would happen once depressed.  I had visions of a gas pipeline erupting.

    Crockett is a very old town.  Driving through it to get fuel for the next day I found narrow streets, and a round about to assist you in going around the county courthouse.  The gas stations were on the other side of town; as were some box stores and fast food joints.  I guessed that the citizens had wanted to bring in 20th century capitalism, but didn't have room to build inside the town so they decided to build a loop road for this purpose.  It also provided me with a route around the narrow roads the next day.

    I spent the night inside the trailer since there was nothing to look at outside.  Ready to leave Crockett with a vow to only drive around it the next time I'm in the area.

   

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