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It has been warm here in the Rio Grande Valley,

 …as it should be, but today was cool (80 degrees) and rainy.  A little rainy weather seems right in tune with all the Florida hurricane coverage we’ve been watching. Our weather cleared in time for a sunset. A brief respite from the heat; our weather should be back to normal tomorrow (in the 90s).  The weather will get a lot worse for Florida before it gets back to normal. 
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Home again

 We’re back in South Texas. Final 2017 Summer Trip Map With a celebratory stop at Whataburger. We’re back to our comfy little house …after a grand adventure.  We were on the road for four months.  We traveled a lot of states (I tried to count them but I got confused).  Five Canadian Provinces (two we had never been to before).  Every U.S. time zone (four)(not counting Alaska and Hawaii).  Ten thousand miles.  We stayed in sixty-six different campgrounds.  Got visits with family and friends we don’t get to see very often.  We witnessed four full moons and a solar eclipse.  We got turned around by forest fires and smoke.  Our return to Texas travel plans got changed by the hurricane.  And some of us gained less than a pound a month.   It’s good to be home. Maybe I like this view of our trip the best.  J A wider view of the 2017 Summer Trip Map 
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Highway 285

 Between Carlsbad, NM and Pecos, TX.  The landscape has been totally raped by energy production.  It’s one thing to sit in a city and say we need more energy.  To drive through the countryside, viewing the cost of producing that energy is another thing entirely; the previously wild landscape transformed into a hundred mile sprawling city of oil and gas patches, drilling rigs and dusty roads, pumps, pipelines, gas flares, outbuildings, and sterile man-camps; roads clogged with, and ruined by, oil and gas trucks that outnumber passenger cars two to one, as if this West Texas high desert had no other purpose.  You can see from the sky on Google Maps:  It is awful.   The occasional desert resident has an impact on this land.  They put down roots, however shallow, in the dry desert soil.  They join the land in a battle with the elements; a struggle to survive.  Man camps sit on cement blocks above the bulldozed lifeless ground, with no commitment to staying, and no investment in the landscape or the damage done. My inner Edward Abbey is outraged.  We’re at the Fort Stockton RV Park tonight, an oasis. 2017 Summer Trip Map      It’s 90 degrees and clear.  We’re back in Texas and out of the smoke.