Texas Border Skirmishes

Numero Uno:

 
On our way out of Big Bend we finally got into some Verizon cell tower service again, (AT&T appears to be dominant in this area) and our phone was dinging with messages and activity so we pulled over at a wide spot on the road shoulder in this open desert and returned phone calls while we had some limited service. Next thing I know there is a border patrol rig behind us with lights flashing and the guy out walking towards us with his hand on his gun. Shit. Really?? 

So I get out and try to explain to him that we are old, stupid, tourists and did not know that their border checkpoint was only two miles ahead of us. Steve is still talking on the phone to his aunt and the guy hears conversation and is suspicious about who we have in there with us and what are we doing. I am back pedaling and trying to explain that we are just back in communications after a week in the mountains, blah, blah, blah. 

He finally decided that we are harmless and probably not stuffing a bunch of illegal’s or drugs into our closets before the checkpoint and he moves on ahead.

  
We get off the phone and move on to the checkpoint and figure we are going to get the real deal.... tear apart the rig, drug dogs, inspect our undies, see whatever they can find, hours of interrogation.... kind of inspection. 

We are coming from a dead end road, there is nowhere else to go, if we don’t show up we are for sure suspicious, we have no choice but to proceed.  But it turns out the same guy is there and he is pleasant and runs the dogs around us and looks in the back (where we obviously could not hide anybody) and then I apologize again for being dumb tourists from nowhere and we are on our way. 

Creepy … can’t even stop to talk on the phone around here. Big Question is … what kind of cameras do they have and where are they in this flat arid nothing landscape that they even knew we were stopped there? They could not see us from there If we had known we were that close to the checkpoint we never would have stopped.

Numero Dos:

So after that, we look at the maps and saw that we have a lot of miles to travel to the Texas Hill Country and it is getting late so we decide to head to the relative safety of Seminole Canyon State Park campground a hundred miles or so away. It is a few miles from the border, but across the Rio Grande which is in a canyon there. We decide that is a better choice than the nearby National Park’s Amistad Reservoir that has several campgrounds, but borders Mexico and has many ways to cross in the water.  Seminole Canyon is billed as a beautiful place where the Pecos River comes in and there are guided tours of the ancient cliff dwellings down in the canyon.  Sounds good. We get there in late afternoon and camp up on the hill in a scenic site and get a little cooler air breeze. Still hot here (low 90’s) and feeling humid. Supposed to be cloudy the next 2 days. No cell service here either but they have free wifi radiating from a dish atop the bathrooms. Yay. We are able to catch up a little. Very dark skies and we are hoping to see the meteor showers. Night it gets down into the 70’s and about 4 am we hear some kind of distant low humming  and think the guy next to us is running his air conditioner. It goes on and on and on for hours. Finally we get up about 6:30 (time change has us dark until nearly 8 am) and we decide to head out to the free showers and see if there are any meteors. We walk out in front of our rig and nearly bump into a stealth border patrol truck parked right in front of us. That is the “motor” we hear running. This guy has a radar unit in the truck bed on some kind or scissors jack and it is up high and he is sitting in the rig with the engine running/humming and watching some figures move around on a green screen. I am sure his heat seeking device saw us get up in our rig and get dressed. Hope he liked the show. We walk up and Steve says “watch ya doin’?”  So casual. I am ready to scurry back to the rig after our morning’s  incident. The guy says he is watching someone move through the area way off and there are two border agents on their way to 'intercept' him. We said we were going to head down to the showers and asked if that was safe (a few hundred yards at the most) he said yes it was. So off we went in the dark with our flashlights. I was feeling uneasy and made Steve come with me to check the bathrooms and showers for fugitives before I went in, but everything was fine and I felt foolish for being a weenie.  We showered and went back and had our coffee and just before light the rig moved on. No headlights, no taillights …. it just quietly glided away … very creepy.

 Then an hour or so later we talked to other campers in tents and they said that agents woke them up at 4 am in their tents and asked them if they had heard or seen anybody moving through the campground. Yeah … real safe ….that’s it …. 2 in 24 hours ... We’re done with this ….we are out of here. Heading away from the border and this crazy cat and mouse game. I don’t know how people can live with this day after day.