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March 4 through March 10, 2005
Friday March 4:
The morning dawned cloudy. Today we drove the RV to a trailhead 5 or 6 miles away and hiked the short 1.4 mile round trip Boquillas Canyon trail along the Rio Grand. We had biked here last time, and the total experience was pretty memorably exhausting. I was undecided about soaking again in the hot spring in the morning, and we considered the bike ride instead. In the end, neither of us was too enthusiastic about repeating that bike ride, with its numerous steep hills to climb and descend, so we decided to drive. The drive over the narrow winding road to the trailhead might have been challenging in spots, but with little traffic on the road we could use both lanes for our turns. There was just adequate parking space for the motorhome in the lot. This l'il guy was cute and friendly....
Mom & Dad kept him on a short leash though.... :-) The trail started with a steep climb and an overlook of the valley.
Despite the clouds, the scenery here is impressive! My eye caught these holes in the rock. I was thinking they were prehistoric Indian grain grinding mortar holes, when a fellow tourist suggested they were left over mounting holes from towers for an overhead ore transport system used around the turn of the century...oh well, fer sure they are man made! :-)
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Only when viewing our pictures later did I see a picture of these same holes on the trail poster at the trailhead...touting the Indian Mortar holes we might see. :-)) The canyon walls towered above us as we approached the narrow opening.
Before we can get there, we must pass through this reed covered portion of the trail....
At least this one is standing height with clearance on the sides! :-) On the other side of the reeds, the terrain opened up and we found some items displayed on our side of the river, and an English speaking Mexican on the other side hawking them. He asked if anyone had given us money for something he had purchased...I said no. He seemed quite disappointed....... I looked at a pinkish quartz crystal block, even negotiated the price at $3, when Claire suggested I might end up in jail, as Mexican crystal is illegal to buy. The Mexican man insisted it would be OK, but I declined, and the price came down to $2.50 as I walked away. :-)) Claire was a safe distance away down the trail by now...avoiding any involvement with the shady cross border merchants...there's no moss on her!!
The canyon becomes ever more impressive as it narrows and towers overhead. Many rocks look cracked and only temporarily stable at best....and they are up there OVER our heads!! We soon reach the trail's end and start back. The flowers here are memorably different than last time, just by being here at all...
Now they are here in large numbers too! We returned to the RV, and after a quick lunch drove to the hot springs RV parking lot. Claire pointed out this desert rock nettle growing along the cliff face on the trail to the spring; it is strikingly beautiful....
Just do not touch its stinging parts! I am wary of ANYTHING named nettle, especially in the west where everything seems to bite, have thorns, or be somehow poisonous. :-)) The hot spring was empty when we got there...but not for long!
The young couple on the left were living in their RV after selling their house to pay off debts. They counseled for a summer camp in New Hampshire summers, and intended to work camp when necessary to support their new lifestyle. That man was the only one I saw jump from the hot spring into the Rio Grand this trip....
His lady offered moral support...but HER legs were on the hot side!! :-)) I guess it must not have been TOO bad, as he did it several times, but my thoughts were ... BRRRRRRRR!!! I soaked for a couple hours, enjoying it thoroughly, but then it is time to return to Rio Grande Village. We got there around 6PM, just in time to get situated back in our campsite while it was light enough to avoid branches and other elusive but potentially damaging objects too close to be ignored or unseen. Dinner was burritos that finished Claire's delicious chili. We decided the ranger's program on pre-park life in the Big Bend area could be skipped tonight, as it was too late when we finished dinner.
Saturday March 5:
We planned on showers before dumping and filling water, then leaving the campground before noon. We'll expected to soak a couple hours on the way out, then drive to the 3.5 hours to Fort Stockton Walmart for the night, and hopefully be back in cell communications there. This stay in Big Bend was not as isolated as last time, since we found the Dallas AM radio station, but it is still isolated without TV or cell phone. We did find two WiFi nodes, "mouse" and "linksys" but both were WEP encrypted. There were at least two satellite internet setups visible on RVs in the park, so they could have been the source, but they were not sharing freely. When morning was not very old, light rain started. It was steady, and continued through the morning. Around 10AM we were ready to clear the campsite, and drove to the trash dumpster near the host's site. She came to us asking if we were looking for a site...we said "no, we're leaving, but how is the road to the hot spring?" She said she would not do it in our motorhome. A man in a 4 wheel drive pickup had just come back, saying it was not easy for him. We dumped, then continued reluctantly on out of the park. The hot spring road had a bit of standing water on it already, and it was certain to be slick as grease now. The road is narrow and the ditches are deep. We do not need to pay for an expensive off road tow, or worse! 46 miles later, after lunch, we drive through the entrance gate and bid farewell to Big Bend through a rain splattered windshield.....
The 146 mile drive to Fort Stockton goes well, and is not totally uninteresting either, even on this gloomy day. Numerous livestock are visible from the road.
These longhorn cattle are formidable in appearance, and I'm happy I do not have to manage them! We arrive at the Fort Stockton Walmart mid afternoon. I download email through the strong roaming digital connection. We do not pay for roaming on our National Single Rate plan, but I am surprised Verizon Quick Net Connection works here. I find I cannot send mail through Verizon's SMTP server though...so I use my hotpop server to send. On the road we find we need multiple ways to do everything, as no one way works everywhere! I am up later than usual catching up with the net, but realize I want to be up early too...so finally retire.
Sunday March 6:
I am up early for the net, and work the webpage some. By noon I have uploaded to the primary site, but we want to move east ahead of predicted heavy thunderstorms. We call and arrange with Camping World in New Braunfels north of San Antonio to hold a new toilet for us if it comes in Monday as scheduled. We can overnight in their lot, AND they will put our old toilet in their dumpster! :-). I decide there should be good digital coverage anywhere along I-10, so we decide to overnight at a rest stop 130 miles away. Along the way, while Claire was driving, I grab a jar of nuts from the pantry, and as I eat them I'm disgusted by a foul fishy smell which I trace to a spot on my hands. I wonder where I picked that up, but hand washing removes it. A few hands full of nuts later, there is another spot of foul liquid on my hands, which I trace to the top of the nut jar... OH OH! I look in the pantry, and soon find an unopened liter bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce (Nuc Mam) laying over on it's side, dripping very slowly on everything below. This will take MAJOR work to fix! I put the bottle in the sink, and the trip continues. We can still take joy from the huge patches of flowers growing frequently along the road.
We are pleasantly surprised to see a clean dump station with potable water at the rest stop when we drive in, but a bit disappointed to find analog cell service. Oh well, the finishing of the webpage uploading must wait until next weekend! I'm done driving for today, and want a shower tomorrow with the water here too!! Claire proofreads the webpage, then I notice the cell signal is now digital. We try some voice calls, the phone immediately switches to analog, then back to digital soon after the call. I try the net....and it connects after a few tries! It is SLOW, but works and stays connected. I finish uploading the webpage with difficulty, as FTP does not want to work consistently. The last few files I must upload very slowly through a dial up connection to Access-4-Free in Massachusetts, but it gets FINISHED, and the email sent. I am ready for bed...but I've forgotten the dishes. They too get finished, and I quickly drop off to sleep.
Monday March 7:
There is fog in the morning, but we are allowed 24 hours here and intend to clean the pantry of fish sauce, then SHOWER before dumping and filling water, then leaving sometime before our 2 PM arrival time yesterday, in case anyone is keeping track. :-) The fish sauce fortunately washes odor free with plenty of detergent, but everything in the pantry must be washed or thrown away, then the walls inside the pantry must be done before we can consider the fish sauce under control. The offending fish sauce source bottle is washed, bagged, wrapped in newspaper, put in a box and further over bagged...to prevent it's ever becoming a leaker again! After showers, and completely fresh clothes, the fish sauce episode is officially declared closed! We move toward Kerrville after lunch, and a fast call to Camping World's 800 number on the rest stop's pay phone to verify our toilet really did arrive. They cannot verify yet WHAT is on the pallet of toilets they received, we must call back later. The drive to Kerrville is easy, broken by a two hour period of routine generator maintenance in a parking area. We had not plotted the exact location of the Kerrville Walmart, but I thought I could use the GPS map to find it. Alas, the GPS map has once more run off the edge of it's detailed memory....GRRRR! Finally we fall back on the old "Next Exit" book we have, and find the correct Kerrville exit to use, and the direction to go once we get off. We were here once before, 3 years ago, but our memories have NO recollection at all of its location. We find it easily, the lot is large, so we park at the edge and go in to shop...and I call Camping World again. They have a toilet on hold for us! I tell them we will be there by tomorrow noon, and they confirm SR 46 is a good road to use to avoid San Antonio traffic. Claire finds fresh sugar snap peas, and cooks fried rice for dinner while I update the GPS map data to take us all the way to Kansas City MO. The fried rice is YUMMY. I update the log, and then it is BEDTIME!
Tuesday March 8:
I was up early with the computer again, trying to get a jump on what I can see is a busy weekend coming up in San Antonio. We departed Kerrville at 9:30AM, for the 83 mile drive to New Braunfels. The most noticeable thing to us was the gradual appearance of...FORESTS! They were low at first, but much of the countryside became covered unless agriculturally utilized for pasture or other crops. Streams had water here too, apparently year round. SR 46 was a good two lane road, more traffic than we have been used to, FAST for us at 65, but plenty of places to pull off for the lines of cars that gathered behind us to pass. The last of the drive took us through Gruen, a tiny town with the center being a historic district set up for tourists. The most memorable thing for us was the narrow low concrete bridge we had to cross with the full fast running Guadaloupe River lapping up against the edge of the concrete road surface. There was no load limit posted on the bridge, and the roadway driving surface was dry, so we crossed; I could not help noticing that a car coming across in the opposite direction waited until we were safely across to start their crossing. :-) The camping World was close enough to the Street Atlas location to be seen easily...only 0.9 miles off. :-) Our toilet was waiting, but I noticed the water fitting came out of the new one low and facing back, while ours was high and facing down. The goods news is that there is more semi flexible pipe than needed. The bad news is the pipe is too long and will need to be cut, and a new fitting put on, since the original fitting is crimped on. Dave the parts man did not have the recommended 90 degree elbow "Flair-It" fitting for 1/2 inch pipe in stock. He sent us to Home Depot 2 miles away, and they sent us to AAA Mobile Home Parts in the center of New Braunfels just two blocks west of I-35 on Seguin St. We had to do some phone book searching and calling around, as the original description of AAA's location referred to an I-10 exit, and I did not want to drive 50 miles to San Antonio for this fitting. The guy really meant I-35....oh well, I get confused too! :-) The total driving for this part was 9 miles round trip, with two cellphone calls to check availability. While we were buying the toilet, Dave made other suggestions...like using a butane lighter to heat the water pipe if we needed to bend it a bit. Bless him....as we DID need to bend it, even with the 90 degree elbow! The heat worked like a charm, softening the pipe to bend into position, then it became fairly rigid again after cooling. As I write this, the old toilet awaits disposal and the new one has lasted the night with no further leaks after several tightenings early in the evening. The usual process by which compression fittings are made leakproof by repeated 1/8 turn tightening and wait 30 minutes to check, find a leak, tighten further, has finally resulted in dry toilet paper under the fitting this morning. Another quarter turn on one mounting bolt has removed the last bit of rocking from our new commode! This one uses a standard toilet seat which can be replaced easily if it breaks, and has a china bowl which should stay clean longer and clean easier when it is dirty too. What more could an RVer want for nearly $200? :-) Ya wanna SEE it? Well, we came out here to see the good, the bad, and even the ugly...so we pass on what we see.
You decide which category this fits into..... to us it is beautiful....clean, white, with a non cracked seat, a cover, installed, not leaking, and WORKING well! :-) Seriously, the flush mechanism seems much improved, with a small air over water pressure tank on the back to provide a high pressure spurt of flush water, to rinse better with very little more water used than with the old one. We returned to Camping World to thank Dave for his help, then came back to the RV to dinner of potatoes and chickpeas with Chinese cabbage salad. It was good, spicy with jalapeno, but VERY good. I was too tired to be interested in the news, and retired early. Perhaps being AWAY from the news in Big Bend has made me aware it is NOT as important to my life now as I previously thought? :-) The Camping World parking lot is close enough to I-35 to hear traffic noise, but it's well lighted and FILLED with (mostly unoccupied) RVs awaiting sale or maintenance in the shop. We certainly do not appear a bit unusual parked here! Some rain fell before I slept...not heavy, as is predicted in Dallas, but it forces Claire to close the overhead vents.
Wednesday March 9:
I am up by 5AM, surprised at the volume of traffic I hear on I-35 this early. The tissue under the new toilet plumbing connection is still dry, so we finally have the right tension on the nut. It is not cold, 54 under the RV at 6:30 AM. Today we plan to try for a laundromat, and see if we can tour New Braunfels a bit before moving south toward San Antonio for Friday's start to the Irish festival. Claire finds the Corps of Engineers Potters creek campground 25 miles away, with electricity and water on the sites. She has been wanting electricity to clean the RV, and this looks like an opportunity to do it inexpensively. We call shortly before 8 AM and find the office is closed, opening at 8...DUHHHHH, dumb on my part! Shortly after 8 we find they have space, and our Golden Age half price will be $9/night, but with this being spring break week, it is expected to fill fast. We pack up our (mostly) old faithful but degenerating toilet in the new toilet box, add it's broken cover from storage underneath, and Claire carts it off to the Camping World dumpster while I ready us for travel. We are on the road by 8:30AM, a VERY early start for us. We find a DELIGHTFUL campground at Potters Creek... hard surfaced level waterfront sites, with mowed grass, looking across the water at an upscale neighborhood with deer grazing in the yards...
It doesn't get much better than this! After breakfast, I open the inverter case and put a few tiny drops of 20 weight oil the fan bearing which I exposed by cutting its label and removing a plastic cover plug. The computer style cooling fan has been refusing to start without some HARD knocks, and the last oiling kept it running smoothly for over a year. I close it up with a circle of plastic tape to keep dust out after reassembling it, and it again starts easily and runs fine. Claire starts cleaning, and I find the shower has free hot water, along with companions for the lonely..... REALLY large spiders in quite large numbers. One is trapped in the sink...I resist the urge to wash it down the drain, as it would not fit anyway. :-) I notice a camper washing their RV, and walk up to the hill to the volunteer's gate booth, asking if I might wash my RV here...the lady said "Sure, have at it.....we have plenty of water!" I returned to get the hose and brush out, and set up to do the job. The windows would have to be closed on the side I am working on, but Claire says OK. Neither of us even THINK about our air conditioners, which would run fine on the electricity here...another DUHHH today! The scum of red western dust that has built up since November yields easily to the 20 Mule Team Borax, which rinses easily to leave the shiny wax coat showing once more, except on the windows with residual water marks. The washing is finished by 3PM, and the RV really shines! :-) Claire finishes cleaning the interior about the same time, and I am quite IMPRESSED with the improved appearance inside too!. I still must squeegee the windows to remove the watermarks, and do that before our dinner of pork chops smothered in onions, brown rice and butternut squash. We leave the cellphone antenna's mount loose with the antenna hanging down, and the caulking of some screws in the roof that had been covered with silicone seal that does not stick well to rubber roofs to repair tomorrow after everything up there dries from the washing. Claire decides she still has energy to dye her hair in the campground's ladies shower while I finish the dishes. She returns with tales of the HUGE spiders taking refuge under her clothing bag ..... I do hope she checked for hitch hikers when she came back! :-)
Thursday March 10:I'm up at first light, it is 45 degrees under the RV. The defrag has completed it's second run with no fragments showing, so we've used the campground electricity well overnight. :-) The first run took 3 hours and left over 300 fragments....I restarted it in the middle of the night, and it finished the job perfectly. :-) The sun soon warms the world, and I open the shades to let it warm me! I find non-WEPed Kingspointnet on the WiFi, but as is often the case, I am unable to connect to the net through it. I suppose it is a pay subscription thing with special software needed to connect to the net through it. I decide not to waste time on it, and work on the log instead. Claire is up soon after 8AM, and I have the antenna to fix and caulking on the roof to do. I also decide to grease the TV antenna rotating bearing surfaces, and choose fluorinated grease as I have no recommended silicone oil. This should be durable, and the antenna turns much easier after it is applied. This campground has been quite useful for us, as well as being...well, PRETTY!
We had chosen the open site near the water over tree shaded ones further back, as the weather did not seem hot enough to require shade yet. Two years ago when this area flooded and the Guadaloupe River rampaged, the lake was so high all of these grassy sites were under water.... This lake level is considerd normal. We do find the Corps of Engineer campgrounds we use are really GREAT for what we need to do. The top managers seem to be people who must DO THINGS, and understand that others need to do so too. They do not discourage maintenance tasks in their campgrounds, and design their sites with lots of space between, so washing is possible without running water onto other sites. They have volunteers patrolling to ascertain that people are not messing the sites up, and we have seen no abuse. We shower, and fill water on the campsite, then proceed to the dump station. Claire asks directions to a laundromat on the way out, and receives a pre-printed slip with driving directions to "the cleanest laundromat God ever created" 14 miles away. This determines we are going back through New Braunfels, and we easily find the laundromat. I park using much of the parking lot, and Claire starts the laundry. The owner comes in shortly asking whose motorhome is using up most of her parking lot. I say mine...she says it must move. I ask where we can park it to use the laundromat. She says put it in Bay 3...it's out of order. I was puzzled until she pointed out the last bay in the car wash out back...OK!! :-) It's nice and level too, not like the lot! Claire felt like a Ryans or Golden Corral buffet for dinner rather than cooking, and Street Atlas found a Ryans just north of the Guadalupe river in downtown New Braunfels. Then perhaps we can find the Walmart, and use it to locate the HEB supermarket Claire recalls is across the street. That is the market we really want. :-) We've had a heavy last three days; the toilet change, then the cleaning of the RV inside and out, and today the laundry and roof work. It's time for a night of no cooking before the Irish festivities in San Antonio. The drive to Ryans is easy, but construction on the I-35 frontage road makes signs confusing, so we exit earlier than planned. It only adds a mile to our drive on business 35, and we're there, with plenty of parking out back. Claire is disappointed that there is no steak on the buffet tonight. I find too many of the dishes highly peppered and salted. Although many of the dishes are good, we both agree Golden Corral is better for our tastes. We return to the RV and drive the mile down business 35 toward Walmart's. The information I had on the location is wrong, it is on the OTHER frontage road on the east side of I-35. I find the system of frontage roads common in Texas along Interstate highways confusing, and it leads us to extra driving to find a way to cross the highway when we miss a location. Some places name the frontage roads "East" and "West" frontage road so it is clear which side the address is on. Here both sides are called "Frontage Road". We turned around and crossed the highway, and parked in Walmart's lot near the trucks. Claire needed her prescription filled, so went into the store to start that process. It usually takes an hour to complete the data base check before a refill prescription can be filled in a store other than that which originally filled it. She figured it might not be filled until morning, but was told to return in 20 minutes. She allowed an hour, and was quickly back with 2 months worth of pills, AND a fresh supply of toilet paper we kept forgetting to buy. By this time I was dozing off for the night, and wished her well with the TV...we have PLENTY of electric after the charging from our 30 hours of electric hookup! :-)
PLANS: This weekend we will spend at the Irish Festival in San Antonio, held along the green dyed river walk temporarily re-named the River Shannon.. :-) Then it is on to spend a day with an internet friend on the way to Austin, where we'll spend a few days looking at the Lady Bird Johnson wildflower center and other attractions there. After that it is on toward Hot Springs AR and a day of hot spring soaking, and maybe diamond hunting in nearby Crater of Diamonds state park too, if we feel ambitious. :-) As the weather permits, we'll drift north to be in the Kansas City MO area on April 1 for Claire's taekwondo seminar. Following that, we'll return south to the Mountain View folk festival on April 15, before finally turning north for home, to arrive there by May 1 when we expect spring to be sprung. Unexpected intervention by the four letter "S" (now) word would of course alter any of these plans. :-)
Our apologies for fewer pictures than normal this week...it's been a WORKING week for us, and the camera many times sat unused while we rested up from the overdue chores.
Until next time...ENJOY! We are!
