| Sanderson, Texas |

This part of Southwest Texas is very dry, very hot, and is very sparsely populated.

And so the highways leading me from Del Rio, TX towards Big Bend National Park were somewhat lonely, and the sites to see were few. Lots of scrubland, a few dried up canyons, and three specks in the road that might pass, in a good year, as towns.

My lodging for tonight is in the biggest of those ‘towns’, Sanderson, at the Desert Inn Motel, a lovely little place, where upon checking in, I kid you not, I got an actual key to my room.

Though clean and functional, my accommodations would probably best be described as spartan, which, to be honest, is all I really need – and which, in a town this remote, and an area this desolate, is about all one should probably reasonably expect.

To some extent, it is amazing that places like this still exist. From the personal check-in process, across a desk after I rang a bell to wake the napping attendant, to the room key, to the look and feel of the motel itself… it’s like stepping back in time, to an era of more wonder during travel. Long before the Internet, GPS, travel booking sites, and so many of our other modern travel conveniences.

You knew you were headed to Big Bend, or some other far off exotic place, you bought a map book and off you went. Eventually you, somehow or other, found yourself at the Desert Inn, a motel which has managed to scrape out an existence in this hard-scrabble, desolate part of our land for over 60 years now.

And then you, as I will tomorrow, moved on…

There is one restaurant in town that looked quite good online, but the clerk tells me it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so ‘they can go shopping’. So the only other option for some basic sustenance is the gas station across the street.

I walked over and looked around and I’ve got some options like Hot Pockets, Lunchables, or some pre-made sandwiches. Unless that is, I was the sort of guy who bought mystery meats off of metal rollers. (I’m not)

I may just stick to whatever I can scrape together out of my cooler.

I do have Wi-Fi – a modern miracle if there every was one – and a warm day with a nice cool breeze, so I pulled a chair outside, and am tapping out this broadcast to you on my tablet, while I wait for the sun to go down over the cactus laden mountain across the street. Probably have a couple of beers out of that aforementioned cooler in a bit, while I write the evening away, before getting an early start tomorrow.

Big Bend is only about an hour and a half away.