More wind

Another beautiful Texas morning. So beautiful we drove around the campground and to the Visitor Center/Museum to see about the history, flora and fauna associated with the Monahan Sandhills. This had us to leaving an hour or so later than we normally do. Mistake.

The wind that had caused difficulties the previous few days was now directly on our right side. 55mph was not very comfortable, so we sneaked off the freeway and drove the parallel frontage road at 45mph. Much better, but still more of a chore than we would like. We stopped for fuel at the Flying J in Pecos, and by the time we were fueled, could see blowing sand across the road ahead -- and behind us, for that matter. The weather radio warned of winds to 45 with gusts to 60!

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As we had decided years ago in the boat: "It ain't supposed to be an endurance contest". Flying J has an attached full-service restaurant, and our fuel slip gave us a 20%-off coupon. Let's park it; eat here, and stay (free). And there's wi-fi available. Do it!

We parked the rig next to some big rigs in the far parking lot, next to two "Oversize Load" fellows who had come in while we were fueling. One of them said he couldn't go fast enough to "go through his gears". His load is a 75-foot by 11-foot by 12-foot flat-sided tank. I gotta believe it's empty, or he could not carry it, so he had a heap of windage on the straight side of a tank without much weight. Our guess is he'll stay here until later tonight or tomorrow morning, when the winds die down. We will not take the night option, but we think we will leave pretty early tomorrow morning. Still have a hundred miles of straight road in the same direction we've been traveling.

And guess what? We found free wi-fi. Life is good.

Too much wind; not enough air

Alas, everyone has a bad day now and then. Saturday was ours --- but maybe not.

We left our park in Brady, TX, and headed west on US 87. The wind had been on our nose the day before, but was now directly on our left side. We wiggled around a bit when we passed behind a grove of trees, through a rock cut or underpass, but we ran at a bit under 60mph and thought we were handling it pretty well. Until a square-nosed truck passed us, and his bow wave unfurled the (new) awning over our slide. It's not a big awning; the slide only goes out 16 inches, but the awning unrolled completely and retracted again -- maybe two or three times from the sound of it. The mirror revealed that it had not rolled up smoothly, but was wrinkled. At our first opportunity, we pulled into a gas station and unrolled and re-rolled it.

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Unfortunately, it appeared that it had stretched the leading edge, which can allow the awning to flop around when deployed normally over the extended slide. Poo.

Three or four miles down the road (and running only about 55 mph), it deployed again; this time with no trucks to cause it. The mirror again revealed a folded/twisted leading edge. We had only about ten miles to go to the park we had selected for the night, and so continued on.

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Four hundred feet from the turn-off to the park, a small truck passed us honking his horn and gesturing that something was amiss. We assumed the back end of the awning (which I can't see in the mirror) was flapping, but he pulled directly in front of us and began to go onto the shoulder. Well, shoot. If he thinks it's important, we ought to humor him and pull over, too. By the time Dean got out, the fellow was running back to us, telling us that the CR-V had a flat tire. Understatement. The tire was in three pieces: The two sidewalls still attached to the rim (and holding the weight of the car) and the tread, looking like an oversized v-belt rotating with the wheel, but dragging half a foot behind the wheel well. And pretty HOT! Lots of little pieces of rubber stuck to the left side of the CR-V. The fellow said he saw us go through an intersection a mile back, and he turned around and chased us to alert us. Wow! Texas chivalry!

As we fumbled to find where the heck the jack and wheel wrench were hidden, another fellow did a U-turn and pulled in behind us and offered to help the gray-headed old guy change the tire. Which he did. For which he would take no money. Neither from the gray-headed guy nor the not-very-gray-headed lady who stood at the back of their car ready to throw herself in the path of anyone who looked like they might wander onto the shoulder and whack us. And he told us where the nearest tire place was. Wow #2! These Texans aren't a bad lot.

An hour later, we were back in our site at the park, with a new spare tire -- the guys said they really didn't have a patch big enough to fix the other one. And time to reflect that this could have been a LOT worse. We've seen tow-cars that have had tires catch on fire. Usually a blackened hulk. Sometimes ONLY the quarter of the car nearest the tire fire was destroyed -- great luck!

We'll never know if the tire was going flat for some time; whether we ran over something on the road, or whether it blew out -- we think we would have heard or felt that. Dean doesn't think he even looked at the CR-V while we were stopped to re-roll the awning -- he was engrossed in THAT problem. As it was, we never saw or felt any abnormality. People who had experienced flats on their tow-cars had told us they didn't see or feel anything. They did not lie.

We still think we're (as Gene Erwin often said), very lucky people. Maybe he now watches over us to see that we stay that way.

The Nimitz Museum

In Fredericksburg, TX, is the National Museum if the Pacific War, aka the Nimitz Museum. This world-class museum specializes in telling the story of WWII in the Pacific, and is dedicated to all those who served there. Admiral Nimitz was born and raised here, so that explains the location.

The museum takes you chronologically through the entire war in the Pacific, island by island, sea battle by sea battle (we didn't win 'em all). We were impressed with the message presented, and the clarity of the displays when we visited the museum several years ago, but knew that a number of improvements had been made.

The improvements were even more detailed displays, with lots of words to read while you were seeing some visual display. Dean was pleased to see that the written material was printed in letters about 1 1/2 inches high, so he could read it without having to crouch down and put his nose against the glass to read them.

One thing they didn't change is the actual B-25 standing on the "deck" of the USS Hornet, starting up an engine for the raid on Tokyo early in 1942. Or the realistic "repair facility" in the mud of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. One could not experience the Pacific War story as displayed here without a feeling of gratitude for the thousands of Americans who lived and died in the hostile weather and enemy action there.

Laurie amused herself by checking out the various shops and shoppe's while Dean fought World War II once again.

Can You?

Zipping along the freeway, as we approach an exit, we observe the standard blue signs alerting us to the various fuel stations and fast-food restaurants that would be available to us at that exit.

At this one exit, just a few hundred feet beyond the "official" sign, was a private sign with the message:

MA SMITH'S RESTAURANT

GOOD FOOD ---- CLEAN RESTROOMS

232 MILES ---- YOU CAN HOLD IT

!!

San Antonio, the 2nd visit

Of course, the first visit to San Antonio must be to the Alamo. Been there - done that - didn't "need" to go again. Last visit it was cold and rainy. This time sunshine and warmth.

San Antonio Missions National Historic Park
The Spaniards' colonization of the New World included the conversion of natives to Christianity. To accomplish this they built many missions. We've visited some in California and others in New Mexico. Quite a few were also set up in Texas.

The Alamo was one of 6 missions built in the early-1700's by Franciscan monks in this area. The monks welcomed and cared for natives and converted them to Christianity.

These missions were a going concern for a 100 years before the monks left and the lands were redistributed to the inhabitants. Without official church presence, the missions soon fell to disrepair and the rocks that made up the walls of the community and other materials were taken to be used in other projects.

It wasn't until the 1930's that there was an interest in restoring and reopening these missions. With depression-era labor and an agreement between state and federal governments and the Catholic church, the missions were rebuilt and continue even today to hold weekly services.

We took an informative ranger-led tour of the Mission San Jose and drove along the Mission Trail past two other missions. The missions were built within a few miles of each other and along the San Antonio River.

We drove across the Espada Dam completed in 1745.



Acequias (gravity flow ditches), dams, and aqueducts were built to provide a continuous flow of water to the farmlands and the mission walled-communities. 263 years later these water-control structures are today still being used in farms.



The River Walk
The San Antonio River used to make a big "U" through downtown. When the river flooded, the whole business district suffered. By cutting a channel to bypass the "U" and installing flood gates, damage from most high waters has been alleviated.

Foresighted individuals kept the "U" from being paved over. Today there are 2 1/2 miles of paved walk along both sides of the river. Trees, plantings, benches, and fountains are all maintained by the city's parks department. There are foot bridges and stairways up to the road level to help the pedestrian navigate this route.

On this beautiful warm and sunny day, the restaurants along the walk were doing a booming business. and captains of flat-bottomed boats were ferrying people from place to place along this route giving guided tours of the sights along the way. A few boats were being used for floating meals.

Spring must be here. Momma ducks and brood were out swimming.

We are awfully naive

We learned this from the local news.

Bars in the San Antonio area have "photo booths" along the walls.

We all know what photo booths are: you and your friends stuff yourself in the booth, pull the curtain, make funny poses and get a set of 4 pictures.

Well... actually, the booths in the bars here are often called "make out booths". In fact, they have now modified the booths to also dispense condoms!

Oh. Oh.

Views from the Safari-mobile

We love camping in government parks and nature preserves to watch the wildlife from the windows of our "Safari-mobile" (aka Amazon.Bus). We spent a couple weeks in the Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon State Parks/Preserves.

Javelinas in our campsite.

Green Jays and cardinals ground feeding below the birdfeeders. We added a few new birds to our "Life List": a Crested Caracara, which is a large scavenger much like a vulture and has a little black tam on it's head. And a Vermilion flycatcher, tiny bright red bird with a sharp pointed black beak. (no pics)

This is a close up of the Green Jay. Pretty bird.

Mr. Tom Turkey and harem came through our site a couple times a day to see if any bird seed had fallen from the feeders. Usually they were lucky, as the red-winged blackbirds hit the feeders heavy and knocked a lot of seed to the ground.

This is a campfire ring at the campground. A great horned owl has decided it is just perfect for her nest. Silly owl!

A Day at the Beach

Padre Island National Seashore is the place "to be" in the summer. During the winter? Perhaps not. We had 3 days of 100% humidity, zero visibility with fog, 30 mph winds, and 75 degrees.....All at the same time! Crazy! Outside walking around we soon became damp. (Note: this is dryer than NW rain.)

The position of this barrier island allows much flotsam & jetsam to coat the beach. The park ranger made sure we knew that it wasn't park visitors causing this problem. He showed us bottles from Asian countries that had drifted this way (we have the Asian drift too across the Pacific) but explained that most of the garbage seems to come from Gulf shrimp boats. He went on to talk about the damage caused by the dragging of the seabed by the shrimper's nets. Apparently, enough bad press (for sure!) and the development of shrimp farming may bring the shrimp boat industry to a close.

The park found old photos of many sea turtles coming ashore to lay eggs. Over the year's the turtles have disappeared. Today, turtle eggs from Mexico have been brought to the park. These eggs are incubated and upon hatching, the baby turtles are escorted to the sea. As these turtles return to lay their own eggs from April to July, rangers pick up the eggs and the cycle starts again.

We found out that when the Padre Island National Seashore was set up in 1962, mineral rights remained in private ownership. It was a surprise to see large trucks and tankers not only on the park roads but traveling down the sand to the site of a natural gas well 15 miles down the beach.

We weren't going to go swimming anyhow but the ranger's office did have warnings about the Portuguese Man O'War. We'd never seen this poisonous jellyfish type creature before. The wind while we were there blew a number of these onto the sand. We carefully avoided them.We came away with a few shells, a few pictures, and an RV coated with salt rime.

LaMardi Gras

Traveling the winter season we seldom find a happening in an area during our stay. But our luck changed this weekend at Lamar, TX's 6th annual LaMardi Gras! A very small town fundraiser for the volunteer fire department.

From Goose Island State Park, it was just a couple mile bike ride to the parade route where many many many beaded necklaces were tossed (and we didn't have to "show" anything!). Nice day to watch all the police vehicles and fire trucks bumping their sirens, the king and queen float, decorated golf carts, classic cars, and Harleys. One clown, one horse.

After the parade, down at the firestation. Food, beverages, bands. Kids games. Great people watching.