Big Bend NP was in our rearview mirror shortly after 8 AM Saturday morning as we headed north then northeast towards home. We were a bit underwhelmed by this national park, partly because expectations had been so high and we had spent the last five winters in a high desert/sky islands environment in Arizona. 

One of the highlights (I forgot to mention in the previous blog) was pickleball in Terlingua. The drive into Terlingua took us by an active pickleball court. After a quick tour of the ghost town, and on the way to the historic cemetery, we again noted the pickleball court across from the cemetery, but with only three players. Not one to pass up a chance to play pickleball, we stopped and asked if they could use a fourth. Each of us borrowed a paddle and played with them for about an hour. It was loads of fun, and as Kay said, “…just proves there are no strangers on Pickleball courts”.  The other players were Jack from the Terlingua area and Kathleen and Kurt, full-time RVers  from Northern Virginia.

Back to Saturday. With a 500+ mile drive ahead of us, we hunkered down and patiently drove towards Midland. There, interstate construction and an overturned semi caused a delay and U-turn on a construction site! 

Here’s Kay’s take of events. “Stay away!  I 20 closed! We were in a motorhome on I 20 at Midland traveling east today. We had been at a full stop with inches movement forward for over 2 hours this day before Easter. This jam up began for us at Exit 132. We still can’t see the ‘problem’ but some semis are backing up on entrance ramps to drive on an access road. We noticed a citizen directing traffic at  a blocked off construction area that forced us to do a U-turn ( he said the interstate was closed) and get on the westbound 20 to then travel and exit, cross over the interstate and turn east on the access road. This backup could easily been avoided had traffic been diverted to begin with to the access road.  Unfortunately the access road is fully clogged with traffic. As we drove the access road east we passed at least 6 miles of stopped traffic. We finally saw why. A semi was pulling a tanker trailer apparently filled with sand that had overturned blocking the entire I 20 eastbound lane/s. What a waste of time and money lost during this traffic screwup. We saw no state employees helping. We saw two Midland police cars sitting on a couple of side roads. Lack of information and warning exacerbated the entire situation. Who is in charge and were my tax dollars used in this kerfluffle? Shame on Texas Highway Dept. planners, supervisors and the construction company.  What no disaster response team?”

After a two-hour plus delay, we were back on track, and arrived at our overnight stop at Coffee Creek RV Resort and Cabins, albeit a couple hours late.

Another long driving day on Easter Sunday got us to the RV storage site about 4 PM. We unloaded just the bare minimum of stuff and made it into our beautiful house about 5 PM. We were both so glad to be home.