Monahan Sandhills is a Texas State Park just past Midland and Odessa on I-20. We had a very long day on the road and Midland must be one of the most depressing cities in the country to drive through. A desolate landscape stretches for miles, of rusted oil machinery, peppered with more plastic shopping bags than probably contained in all of the Wal-Marts in the country. Some of the machinery gives the appearance of an aviary of robotic birds: oil pumps dipping their heads like pecking chickens and flocks of cherry pickers looking like a group of long-necked cranes trying to get organized for a family photo. There are many, many RV parks--using the term parks loosely--which obviously serve more as living spaces for seasonal workers than vacation spots and as many used camper lots--it must be where old campers come to die.
So we were ready for some scenery less brutalized by man and arrived at the park just after 5:00. We didn't carefully check out the message board at the entrance--where our reservation was listed-- and followed the road in guided by the campground signs. The road twists through sand dunes where you can't see more than one turn ahead or to either side, so it's an adventure. But after another loop back to the entrance, we found our site and managed to get planted. The sand drifts over the roads and the sites constantly so it's somewhat of a challenge to find the hard surface.
It's a beautiful place. Once again I'm sorry that we will only be here one night. The sunset was beautiful--a pleasant reprieve from the clouds of the day. Kids from one group of campers used the windy spots at the tops of the dunes to fly kites. One to put on our list of places to come back to.
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