Our Travel Blog

Among the packing away I did last night was the stowing of the sewer hose, my reasoning being that there wouldn’t be too much water in the tanks and it was forecast to have heavy rain in the morning so I’d pack away in the dry. Well this morning when I woke up, I checked the weather for our destination, and it was still under a winter storm warning. The snow was due to start before midday and the overnight temperatures were forecast to drop to around -5°C. With temperatures that low I decided it was best to empty out the tanks.

There had been some very heavy rain overnight, but it had let up after breakfast so I headed out to reconnect the hose. Once showers were over with it was back outside to reel in the hoses and hydro cable and connect the trailer up to the truck. This is normally a simple operation, but this morning the safety lock on the hitch refused to engage, it took about 15 minutes to finally connect, and of course the rain started again!

We finally got underway around 9:45 after a change of clothes. There was no rush hour traffic to worry about on the I-10, just heavy rain. Once clear of the city we started a gentle climb all the way to destination which is just over 3000ft ASL. I’d always imagined Texas as been fairly flat; I was wrong.

Although it rained on and off, and there was a lot of spray from the road, the snow held off until we were about 30 minutes from our destination. The temperature dropped to -1°C but there was no sign of ice.

Who stole the sun? Woke up to an overcast morning, and it stayed that way for the rest of the day.

After breakfast we headed out to the craft mall Lyn discovered yesterday. I came armed with with my tablet in case I had a long wait; luckily there was a Best Buy electronics store in the same mall. The timing worked out great, I got back just before Lyn came out of the store. Guess who spent the most money?

On the way home I decided to go a slightly different route than what the GPS suggested, as I wanted to find out if we could get straight onto the I-10 when we leave tomorrow. Let’s just say that due to the road layouts in San Antonio (there seem to be more Interstates than “normal” roads) we saw more of the area than we had planned, but there is an easier way onto the I-10.

After an early lunch we headed out to the Natural Bridge Caverns, about 25 mile North East of here. The caverns are fairly new, only having opened in 1964. They were different to many of the caverns we have been to before in that they were very open, the formations were not roped off or behind glass, they were right where you were walking. The formations may have been close, but there were severe penalties for touching them.

Below are a few pictures we took, unfortunately the camera got left in the trailer so we only had a cell phone to take pictures with.

At the deepest point we were over 200 feet below the surface, the caverns were at a constant 70°F and 99% humidity. We got quite a workout climbing back up to the surface.

Back at the campsite we started packing up a lot of the outside stuff in preparation for tomorrow as the forecast is still predicting some heavy rain to start overnight. The forecast did have a Winter Storm watch in effect for part of the trip tomorrow. The good news is the watch has been cancelled, the bad news is it is now a winter storm warning. Hopefully we will arrive at out hotel at about the same time as the storm. They are expecting up to 3″ of snow! Welcome to Texas.

Another clear blue sunny day, we climbed up to the high seventies by mid afternoon.

Today was shopping / cleaning day so not too much to write about today. We went shopping before lunch; it was time to buy myself some new jeans, I was happy to find out I now fit a 32″ waist!

After lunch Lyn did the laundry, then we headed out for a walk around the resort, this turned out to be a mistake. We passed a car with some crafting adverts on the back window. Of course Lyn had to check out the web address, which in turn pointed to a crafts mall not to far away. Guess where we’re going tomorrow morning?

Tomorrow, we are also planning on visiting some caverns, then it will a case of packing up early, as some heavy rain is currently forecast for Thursday morning when we are leaving.

A cloudy start to the day, but it quickly cleared and we had another clear sunny day with temperatures climbing into the low 70’s.

After breakfast we headed downtown to find “our” federal building parking lot, once there we found again that we could leave the truck there for free. We headed off to find the hop-on-hop-off bus stop; this was not as easy as expected as evidently the company is not allowed to put any bus stop signs out!

We parked ourselves in the general area of where we thought the stop should be and flagged down the first red double decker that we saw.

We were close enough to the bus stop obviously. Unfortunately  we were the only ones on the bus at the time and the bus driver was more interested in learning about the Canadian tax and healthcare systems than giving the commentary. The first stop was the Alamo.

The Alamo started life as one of the missions established in the 1750’s. By the early 1800’s the Spanish had based a cavalry unit there. In 1836 the Mexican army defeated the Texans in the battle of the Alamo.

We went into the Alamo expecting to see sights similar to the other missions, however all we say inside was a large display of firearms and a gift shop.

The bus continued on its tour, although there was really very little to see and very little to listen to. I think this is the first city tour we have been on where there was more music than commentary. This confirmed something I had been suspecting about San Antonio since we got here, there really is nothing special about it.

Just beyond the Alamo is the Emily Morgan Hotel, with its rather distinctive shape. Evidently Emily Morgan is the subject of the song The Yellow Rose of Texas.

We stayed on the bus for a few more stops and got off at the Pearl Brewery complex. This is the site of an old, wait for it….., brewery which is now in the process of being turned into an upscale yuppy (or whatever the latest word is) neighbourhood of apartments and boutique stores, this was confirmed when we dropped into the local coffee shop / internet hot spot and realised 90% of the computers in use were Macs.

The Main Brewery Building

The Brewery Stables

Back on the bus again, this time to the market square. This was a very Mexican area with many stores and restaurants. We had a fine Mexican lunch here after wandering around the stores for a while, we even bought some ceramic house numbers to replace the fading brass ones on the outside of our home.

From here it was back to the beginning, again little commentary and nothing specific to see. Although San Antonio seems to be a bright, clean and safe city there really isn’t anything memorable about it. I suspect as we head into New Mexico and Central Arizona we may find more of the same.

Running out of titles already!

Warmer overnight, and another clear and bright morning. The temperature reached about 22°C after lunch, so finally we have some consistent, good weather.

This morning I did some more modifications to the cupboards in “my” area of the trailer to keep the wire clutter down while Lyn set up to do some quilting. Before we came home for Christmas Lyn had cut out around 300 pieces of material and had laid them out to create the desired pattern. She the carefully gathered them together in order so that they were already to be sewed together. After a few of the pieces had been sewn, strange mutterings filled the trailer. These mutterings grew in volume over a few minutes, and obviously something was very wrong. It seem that for some reason the pieces were not going back together in the order they were meant! After some more Scottish incantations (at least I think that’s what they were) it was decided to start over and lay out all 300 pieces again to get the desired pattern. By lunch time the deed was done (again) and the pieces all gathered up in a specific order. Let’s hope the plan works next time she goes to sew them all together.

After lunch we decided to head out on the park trail for our daily walk. Again the trail was in great shape, its surface being either tarmac or concrete. This time we decided to head in the other direction, our goal being to reach the end of the trail. We succeeded and walked a total of 3.3 miles.

Tomorrow we are off to the downtown core to try out the hop-on-hop-off bus. As this is a holiday in the US (Martin Luther King day), parking shouldn’t be an issue. San Antonio seems to be parking friendly, as they open up employee parking lots at federal offices for public use on weekends and holidays.

Again cool overnight, but bright and sunny when we woke up. Today the furnace worked as advertised!!

After breakfast we decided to head towards the city of San Antonio for some sight-seeing. We are only about 5 miles from the downtown core, but you wouldn’t think so when in the camp ground.

Our first stops would be a series of Franciscan missions that were established in the area around 1755. Today I’ll let the photos do the talking.

The Second Stop

Around the inside of the perimeter walls of the mission was the accommodation for the local Indian families. These families had been converted to the Catholic faith by the missionaries; above is the kitchen area for one of these families.

An Ornate Window known as the Rose Window

Third Stop Mission Espada

On the way to the fourth mission we passed and Aquaduct was built back in the 1750’s to transport water from the river to the irrigate the fields and provide power for the grist mill

Final Stop Mission San Juan

This was the only painted mission of the four. The four missions were a couple of miles away from each other and all within 5 miles of downtown.

After lunch we headed into the downtown area to find the River Walk, this is a 2.5 mile walk along the side of the San Antonio River, in this particular area a little Human intervention has made a square loop off the main channel. The city has made an excellent job with this walk, which has many river side pubs and restaurants on it. The bad news; there was a riverside Craft sale on today.

The bad news, mentioned above turned into good news (for me), there were only 8 craft tables!

Above is the city’s modern art contribution, “The Torch of Friendship”

We walked about 5½ miles which should get the weight back on track after Christmas, and the trip down. Although San Antonio is the 7th larges US city, it is very open with plenty of green space right in to the downtown area.

Although yesterday was a lot warmer, it still dipped down to 4°C overnight. I woke up this morning just as the furnace came on, it went off about 3 minutes later, which was a little strange as it still felt cool in the trailer. I checked the thermostat and it was commanding heat…. not good.

After breakfast I tackled the furnace. First check showed that there was no voltage on the line to the thermostat; could be a broken wire or a broken controller board. It was time to remove the furnace cover and see what is happening. Luckily the problem was a bad connection to the power line, if it had been a board problem it would have been a major job to pull the whole furnace out to reach it. My plan for a quiet day hasn’t started too well.

The campground has a 10 mile walking / biking trail running along its edge, so we headed over to it for a walk. It was a pleasant walk, but there were NO geocaches, we were not amused! We clocked up just over two miles, our first decent walk of the year.

After lunch we headed out to see what the local area held in the way of stores. Within 4 miles or so there is pretty much any store you would want. I found a Harbor Freight which kept me happy, Lyn got some wool that she wanted from Walmart then we headed off to Home Depot. Last year I put LED lighting in, although these lights were bright they didn’t light a very large area. Last night we were discussing how to get better lighting and I had an eureka moment. We have a ceiling fan which had a blanking plate on the bottom where a light fitting could go. Home Depot had the fittings, so we bought one.

Back at the trailer, fitting the lamp  was going to be easy as there were two wires from the light fitting that connected to two wires on the fan. I wired it all up and switched on the light….. nothing! OK, check to see if there is any voltage on the wires…. no voltage. Next step was to remove the fan from the ceiling, this should be simple, just remove two screws. Well that didn’t work; all the fan blades had to come off, then another half a dozen screws before I could take it down. Once off the ceiling the problem was obvious; one of the wires that fed voltage to the light had been cut when the fan was installed, thanks Forest River. Once the wire was extended and connected it up it was a case of putting everything back together and flicking the switch again. This time it worked, and the trailer finally has some excellent lighting.

Again, so much for a quiet day!

The temperature climbed up to around 19°C today, and it was decided that it was time to break out the BBQ for the first time this year. The weather for the next few days looks promising, maybe finally the weather is going to cooperate!

Well the plan was to sleep in and head out after rush hour, unfortunately my alarm didn’t understand  that we had left the Eastern Time Zone and were now in the Central Time Zone, it rang an hour early. Not having my glasses on I hit the snooze button rather than the cancel button so it went off again 10 minutes later. Finally I got the better of it and got another 45 minutes sleep.

After breakfast we headed off westbound again, and followed I10 right through downtown Houston. We were there around 9:30 and there was only one really slow spot. Then again with up to 14 lanes in places that’s how it should be.

The temperature slowly climbed up to 14°C and the skies cleared. Once that happened I found a problem with the rear view camera. It seems to compensate automatically for brightness, so the picture on the display was a little too dark to be useful. Time to investigate.

We arrived about 4 hours after we set off at a nice looking camp site on the outskirts of San Antonio (which evidently is the 7th largest city in the USA).  Now for thing we weren’t going to do… We weren’t going to live in Barrhaven, that’s where we live, we weren’t going to live in a sub-division, now we are, we were never going to stop at a KOA, this campground is a KOA! It was recommended to us so we tried it. It was a little more expensive than other sites but no too much, but we have a nice spacious treed site and good WiFi. Lyn has a few day trips planned and the weather looks promising at last.