Driving to Big Bend

Driving west from Austin, Texas, there were some clear indications of remoteness setting in. These did NOT include driving through places like Fredericksburg , a decent-sized town west of Austin, in the middle of Texas wine country, with, to the mere passerby, an inexplicable amount of German heritage.

Beyond that, things got thin very fast. 80mph speed limits, desert scrub, ranches. I paused in Ozona for lunch, which is the county seat of Crockett County. While a brief web search doesn't turn up any evidence that Davy Crockett was ever there, they do have a statue of him there.



Signs of waning urbanity disappeared somewhere around Marathon, which was (even as I write this) the most recent place my cellphone worked (for placing and receiving calls, you pedants!).
The road south from Marathon was littered with things like this:

The first sign is clearly a warning about water. The second is a flood gauge. I know, this is desert right? (The third picture is taken during the same stop.) The last sign is, well, just a reminder of how far away Big Bend is from everything.



Finally, after 5 days and 2500 miles of driving: