When we changed our travel plans, we didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find an rv site on short notice. Particularly in the oil patch. Odessa and Midland, Texas, and surrounding areas comprise the Permian Basin, where a large part of America’s lifeblood oil originates. Consequently, this area is very active with companies supporting the industry and the skilled professional people who make it all happen.
A good many of these workers are semi itinerant and live in rvs in huge rv parks for months or years at a time and then move on as the company requires. We scored a full hookup, pull through site in West Odessa named Park Place RV Park, with 260 sites. All but a dozen or so are reserved for oil workers.
We’ve passed through this region several times, but not stopped to explore. The highways are crowded with companies offering tools, materials and support to the oil industry. Huge open areas are packed with pipe, pumps, and “stuff” that I will never identify. Software and data systems companies border rows of tanker trucks waiting in the hot sun for the next load. And, at the west edge of town, a tremendous heap of metal with pipes bent like broken arms and shreds of rusted tanks that have carried their last consignment of oil, concrete, sand or water are being loaded onto a string of open railcars to be sent on their final journey to be reincarnated as…..pipes, tanks, pumps, and “stuff.”
We’ll be here for a couple of days, and hope to explore a bit.
The title?
When I called this morning to request an rv site, Wendolyn (yep, that’s her correct name) said she had four sites available. Like a dummy, I said that we need satellite access, so could she not put us under a tree. So, she laughed and said “There aren’t any trees in West Texas!”
I have to agree.
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