Pay Attention to Your Brown Signs

 After saying our goodbyes we headed north for about 5 hours to a campground called Copperas Creek which sat adjacent to Proctor lake just outside the town of Comanche, Texas. Parts of our drive even took us along the historic Chisholm Trail. 

It wasn’t a bad campground and our new gear to deal with the heat worked quite nicely, however, the bathroom situation could have been better. Seems like they didn’t have a camp just to show a little bit of love to them. They came with “friends”. 

After saying goodbye to our “friends” we headed to our next stop for the night at Clear Creek Campground in New Mexico. This campground was in the Santa Fe National Forest and just around the corner from Valles Caldera which we had the pleasure of visiting on our road trip in 2021. 

On the way to our destination for the night we saw some historical marker signs aka brown signs talking about the historic Fort Sumner and the resting place of Billy the Kid! We got ourselves turned right back around and made the turn to go have a little adventure. It was only a couple of miles off of our route so we couldn’t just skip it. We had already missed out on another fun happenstance of a mammoth skeleton outside of Waco that we happened to pass just due to day and time. 

Sam and Bryson are thinking it might be fun to be outlaws. 

The original grave was marked with a wooden cross and this stone was donated in the 1950s. The larger stone was donated later. The smaller marker has been stolen twice and recovered so a cage has been erected over both. That didn’t stop someone from sneaking into the cage in 2012 and tipping over the larger marker. 

Our campground at Clear Creek was wonderful. It was quiet and cleanest vault toilets on the planet. The camp host was friendly too. He was from Houston and enjoyed hearing about our adventuring in South Padre Island and Brownsville. We spent the night listening to a very vocal elk and a chatty pack of coyotes. I also got to see the milk way on my midnight potty run. We were also cold that night for the first time in weeks. It was glorious.

There were wildflowers and honeybees everywhere. It was so lovely. 

These guys were so chonky! Unfortunately you can tell which animals have been fed by humans by their behavior. This little friend ran right up to us and sat up looking cute looking for food 🫤

Our potable water source for the night. We did not need to avail ourselves as we carry a 6glln collapsible container full of water in the back at all times.