South Texas - Fort Clark Springs

We have a couple of friends here in Bracketville, Texas that live in Unit 37 at Fort Clark Springs.  The town and nearby Fort Clark were established in the early 1850s.  Later, the town became a stop on the San Antonio - El Paso stagecoach route.

The first day we arrived we took a tour of the museum on post.

Some famous people were stationed here at one time including boxers Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis.

General Wainwright of Corregidor and Bataan fame was here.  Lt Col George Patton was also stationed here at one time.

Fort Clark was a major calvary base of the U.S. Army and the last active calvary base in the Army.  It ceased training here in 1944.  The base today is on the U.S. National Register of Historic places and a large part of the buildings are intact.  A civilian community of approximately 2,000 people currently live here with a town council and full city facilities.  On the base are a number of permanent RV homesteads that each have an RV pad, RV shelter, full hookups and attached RV buildings/storage facilities.

Our friends Joe and Frances live here three driveways away from Jerry and Kit.  There are RV loops/streets (called 'units' here) and it is a very unique place.  People live here full-time in their rigs while others live here during the colder months of the year and travel during the summer.

Jerry and Kit currently are 90 minutes away working as gateguards for a drilling company and invited us to use their place while we are at Fort Clark.

They put in an extra set of full hookups for visitors which is a pretty sweet deal.

We are here seeing Joe and Frances who gave us a golf cart tour of the Fort.  It took us along the river, down some back roads and we saw some of the older buildings, different neighborhoods and an armadillo.

We joined a large group of about 30 at lunch on Monday.  In addition to it being Valentine's day, the wood carving club at Fort Clark wanted to have a surprise birthday party for Wallace who teaches and leads the group.

We traveled up the road to Bill and Rosa's Steakhouse and Saloon.  It is one of those one-of-a-kind places with excellent food and a lot of atmosphere.  The chicken friend steak was great!

One of the highlights at lunch was meeting long-time blogger reader and new friend Darlene. She was nice enough to come over and introduce herself and we chatted for a bit.

She and her sister live at the Fort with their husbands who are brothers.  -- Talk about a close family!  All are RVers and have their places in Unit 37 near where we are staying.  Meeting readers of the Roadrunner is a big thrill and it was nice to meet them!

The weather here has been great (high 70's, low 80's) and we played golf on the base course.

It started out overcast but by noon it was bright and sunny.  We had a good time and will try to play again later in the week.

Folks here get together a lot and did so on Tuesday night to say goodbye to a couple that is returning north.  They had a cookout-social for them and we all brought some food to share.  William and Mary hosted the event for about 10 couples.  They are on unit 14? (I think) and have a very nice place.   Their property backs up to the desert with a great view.   They have all kinds of animals that come by every day to check out the bird seed.

We had a great time watching the birds, deer and turkeys wander by.  The cardinal kept his distance in a tree about 30 yards away.

Yesterday we made the 90 minute trip to the spot where Kit and Jerry have their gate guard gig.

We got there in time for lunch.  We had stopped in Eagle Pass to pick up some fried chicken and McDonald's large diet cokes for the occasion.  It was great to see them and visit.  The last time we saw them was in Galveston at a NOMADS project last spring almost a year ago.

We are may be interested in getting a position with this company so we asked a lot of questions.  Jerry and Kit are working a lot to put aside extra money so they can build and add to their RV property at Fort Clark.  The position requires one of them to be at the gate 24 x 7 and the pay is $125/ day.  The job is not hard but they have to deal with the weather and being fairly isolated.

We chatted and got caught up and learned a lot about their job.  We also learned about the drilling that is going on nearby.  We had a fun time in the great weather and had more fun chatting with them.  They are such nice and generous people.  They have told about their experience on their blog at kitandjerry.com.

That is it for this edition of the Roadrunner Chronicles.  Thanks for viewing!