The Fort Stockton KOA is at the eastern edge of Fort Stockton. Behind the KOA (north)
is a mesa. Depending on your eye, the desert is either very bleak or very beautiful.
The park is right off the highway. It looks like an oasis in the desert.
Like most KOA parks, it is very easy to find the office where you check in.
The office building includes a convenience store, laundry, restrooms (including
showers), and restaurant. They sell meal tickets for breakfast and dinner in their Roadrunner
Cafe in advance at the office. We bought dinner tickets ($7.95 each) and had a simple
but tasty dinner.
The park includes a desert nature trail. We were warned that javelinas and gray foxes
are active in the area and to keep close in with our dogs. Given that javelinas are also
dangerous to humans, I decided not to wander down the 2½ mile nature trail.
The garbage cans at the park entrance have been painted to look like a road off into
the distance. A rather neat way to "hide" garbage cans.
They also sell gasoline, diesel fuel, and propane gas. We filled up the truck. The
diesel prices were reasonable. Can't beat the convenience.
I just like old tractors. This one is obviously still in use.
The have a nice playground. Don't worry, they have soft sand under those swings. In the
background is the swimming pool with the camp office on the other side of the pool.
There is a dog run. It is too short to be useful. Normally, we like to take the leash
off the dogs and let them run free for a while. Running free really helps the little
buggers to run off excess energy.
We got a pull through campsite. It is at the end of a row and as a result it is shorter
than some of the other pull through spots. Given the shortness of our truck and trailer,
we didn't have any trouble getting both into the spot.
The hookups were easy to work with. The only thing we were missing was a cable TV
hookup.
Fort Stockton is a kind of gateway to the Big Bend area of Texas. You can find some tourism information on Fort Stockton here.
General information about the Big Bend area is published by The Big Bend Quarterly.
Here are some additional sites about Big Bend:
In the morning a storm blew in. We got some rain. Mostly it was windy and dusty.
I found the following advisory in the KOA park guide.
WIND WARNING
WINDS IN WEST TEXAS CAN CHANGE IN MINUTES FROM A GENTLE BREEZE TO GALE STRENGTH. WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU NEVER LEAVE YOUR RIG'S AWNINGS EXTENDED OR YOUR TV ANTENNA UP WHEN YOU ARE NOT IN OR AROUND THE KAMPGROUND.
Fort Stockton is REALLY windy!
On the way down the highway we stopped at a rest stop to let the dogs out and to take care of business. The rest stop was just outside of Sonora, Texas.
Copyright © 2002 Larry Pearson - All Rights Reserved.