Right close to the Leander KOA we were able to find some stores where we needed to go. We started out with fuel but soon followed up with a visit to Lowe’s (12 volt fluorescent lamp) and a stop at Costco (too much food to fit in the freezer). After one of Costco’s terrific polish dogs each, we moseyed outside the store where they have a separate, attached liquor store, not affiliated with Costco other than having a common wall. They do not sell Kirkland Irish Cream in this store, even though it is Costco’s brand. They sell Bailey’s for about $35 a handle but we found a nearby, dirtbag Irish Cream product called Blarney selling for $19. We got two.
Our route through Texas going through Austin is fortuitous because two former San Diego friends of ours, Gina and Trevor, have been living here for the last year because that’s where Trevor’s work took him. We barged into their neck of the woods hoping to have some time with them and, zowie!, they will be available for escorting the elderly around town tomorrow. I understand there is a place where a big cloud of bats erupts from under a bridge or a cave in the evenings and I would be delighted to see it for myself.

Today we reluctantly departed from TT Lake Medina and headed northeast. Due to the nature of Texas geography and traditional routes for trade, there are no roads directly from areas west of San Antonio to the Austin area. To start our journey, we were obliged to go southeast. Near San Antonio, we joined up with pretty heavy traffic on I-10 until we got to I-35 where we turned northeast.
On the map, San Antonio and Austin look like cities 60 miles apart. In reality, it is pretty much continuous city all the way up I-35. Moderately heavy traffic but pretty good roads once you get the hang of how they are laid out.
North of Austin we pulled off at TX-189, not to be confused with TX-189A which is a toll road. We drove along the cheapskate route for about 10 miles and then turned east on Hero Road where we pulled into Leander NW Austin KOA. We generally shy away from KOA facilities because they are expensive and crowded but decided to give them another try. When we called in advance to make a reservation, the nice lady (Mary) indicated it would cost $120 for a five night stay. That sounded very reasonable so we went ahead and booked the spot.
Upon arrival, we found out that Mary was bonkers and, in addition to $44 they had already collected from us, it would be another $177 to stay in their unremarkable park for five days. We forked over the $100 in mordida and pulled into space 9, a pull-through. Mary, who was not in the office at the time of our check-in, called later in the evening and initially tried to blame an office trainee named Margaret for the initial $120 quote. Peggy calmly told her that she had only spoken with Mary before, never Margaret. At this point, Mary started getting excited and naming other blameworthy folks, including the customer. My dear Peggy actually had to raise her voice, a rare occurance, when dealing with the blameless nincompoop. After a bit of Peggy barking, Mary resumed trying to be reasonable and said she will see what she could do, which will probably be nothing. Now I remember why we don’t stay in KOA facilities. They are expensive and crowded.

The weather finally cooperated today and we took off early for a spin into San Antonio. Normally we would have gone to the River Walk or the Alamo but this time we started out by going to a restaurant called LuLu’s where they are famous for offering a 3 pound cinnamon roll for a mere $10.
I actually wanted to go because LuLu’s is also famous for their chicken fried steak, which has been the point of my food quest for the last 28 months. Although LuLu’s chicken fried steak has a savory coating and their gravy was tasty, the actual steak was a bit boot-like. Their fries were also very good but their corn side recently came out of a can. Prices were reasonable.
I still have not found chicken fried steak that can match Dean’s or Jake’s, both in Oregon.
After lunch, we took a spin through San Antonio and some spooky ghetto sections until we arrived at an early 18th Century mission called Mission San Jose. Mission San Jose is about halfway down a line of missions with the Alamo being the north end and Mission Espada at the south end. San Jose is built sort of like a western stockade; a continuous wall in a big rectangle enclosing a church, a granary where they stored sufficient food for a year, 4 water wells, a grist mill, workshops, a convento which was used to house visitors and clergy and a sophisticated aqueduct system for irrigation of crops. There are also some 85 residences inside the mission compound, all with common back walls that make up the exterior walls of the stockade. The structures are pretty impressive considering they were built more than 250 years ago. This mission is remarkably well preserved and is worth a visit. It is a National Park but it is free.
We bailed out of San Antonio before rush hour turned the drive into a nightmare. We prepped the Barbarian Invader for travel tomorrow because we are headed for Leander, near Austin.
We got some photos on the way and in San Antonio which you can see if you click here

The weather today was crummy; lots of rain and wind, a bit of lightning. We stayed home and did almost nothing other than watching movies and cooking.
We got out the night scope last night but it seems we selected the only time of night when there weren’t animals around. Maybe tomorrow.

The weather has been a bit uncooperative for a few days and we have been staying pretty close to the trailer. Last night there was a series of violent thunderstorms that blew through the area giving us hours of brilliant lightning and considerable cracking, rumbling and window-shaking of the associated thunder.
Today we went into Bandera to shop for groceries. It appears that vegetarians, gluten disdainers, diabetics, those with heart disease and vegans need not shop in Bandera’s Lowe’s Grocery unless intending to be disappointed. If we had driven 50 miles each way, we could have found a larger assortment or less expensive groceries but we were unwilling to go that far so we paid a bit more in Bandera. We are going to Austin next and figured we would drop in at Costco and Trader Joe’s when we get there. Our liquor supply is getting down to the size of a small pyramid and we will need some of that, too.

The weather is still not too good here but worse east of us. There is ice everywhere from Oklahoma to the Appalachians, irritating about 20 million. We are going to look for the internet today because there is certainly no wifi where we are staying.
While I type this, I can look out the windows of the Invader and see not less than one each of cardinals, cara-caras (a big eagle-looking raptor), meadowlarks, hawks, black-crested titmice, Egyptian geese, white egrets, blue herons, doves, coots, fat yellow-bellied squirrels and deer. Based on the nighttime ruckus coming from the marshlands between us and the lake, we suspect there may be a whole zoo of additional characters we have only heard so far. The amount of wildlife here is stunning.
Peggy spent a good part of the morning trying to get pictures off her computer and onto her phone by photographing the computer screen. Her efforts seem to work better when it is darker so she spent quite some time under a blanket with her phone and the computer.
Some pix can be seen by clicking here

The weather is turning against us doing much exploring but we still got something done today. We did the laundry. Actually, Peggy did most of the thinking and work and I folded the rectangular stuff and packed bags of clothes from truck to laundry and back. I was also in charge of sticking the quarters in the slots and tricking the machines into performing their function. While we were waiting on the laundry, we took a short drive a little south along the edge of the lake to where we spotted big fires burning in the brush this morning. We found some smoky places where it appears there are land-clearing operations in progress. The folks here cut down the jungle of juniper and oak brush, stack the slash in big piles and light it off after adding an automobile tire for kindling. We didn’t see any controlled burns that became uncontrolled later. Charlotte and the Barbarian Invader have sprinklings of ash but I imagine the next flurry of rain will wash them off.
Wind and gobs of rain are passing through the area here but we are actually quite fortunate. Not too far east of us is the trailing edge of a massive ice storm that is inconveniencing folks from northern Texas to Pennsylvania and we are delighted to be away from it. There are dozens or maybe dozens of dozens of deer right here in the Thousand Trails Lake Medina campground. There is an abundance of bird species here and we are having a great time watching them. At night, we can go outside the Barbarian Invader and listen to countless creatures hobnobbing with each other. There are a lot of them because it sounds like a distant concert with a big audience. We are going to fire up the night scope one of these nights and see what’s out there.
Check out the pictures by clicking here

Today we got us very late and were quite sluggish until after noon. We eventually became bored with watching TV and decided to take a trip into Bandera, a small community about 20 miles from Thousand Trails Lake Medina where we are currently set up.
Along the way to Bandera, there are many strange sights like cars on posts, camels in a pasture, little limestone Texas houses and metal sculptures of hogs. As we drove along, we passed over some Texas creeks which were absolutely clear. One can see the limestone streambed bottoms. The limestone seems to resist algae unless the water stops moving.
In Bandera, we cruised through the residential neighborhoods and spotted more limestone ashlar masonry houses and shacks and some are quite attractive. We also stopped at a Texas vaporizer store, something we did not expect to see in a state where smoking marijuana or any derivatives is punishable by a million years in jail. A nice elderly lady was working behind the counter and answered all our questions.
This part of Texas seems to have an abrupt dichotomy between the rich and the poor. The rich live in enormous mansions with big fences and gates and the poor live in trailer houses with wrecked cars and broken toys in the yard. There does not seem to be much of a middle class here. They all have covered their cars with Trump stickers, now pointless since he has been elected.
Out at Lake Medina, where we are camped, there are no houses but an abundance of wildlife. There must be 100 nearly tame deer that come by to visit us twice a day. There are meadowlarks that have the most amazing yellow breasts, cormorants, Egyptian geese (despite Texas being a long ways from Egypt) and a myriad of other varieties of birds we have yet to identify. The weather today was nice but the Weather Channel says we are about to get thunderstorms that should last through the weekend. We think we are located high enough above the lake to avoid being flooded. We’ll see in the next few days.
There are some Bandera photos available if you click here

We jumped up again this morning after another one night stay and hopped back on I-10 eastbound. After about 90 minutes, we pulled off I-10 at Kerr and took back roads for about 50 miles to a Thousand Trails preserve named Lake Medina in Lakehills, TX.
It is nice to be off the interstate for the first time in the last 925 miles. State and county roads are much more relaxing to drive than the interstates with their abundant construction projects, demented metropolitan drivers and high-speed travelers zipping by, in no particular lane.
The roads from Kerr to Lakehills offer great scenery along the way. We saw deer, burros, buffalo, camels, pronghorn antelope and an amazing variety of birds, along with the usual rural cattle and horses. We have found that we like Texas, even if they vote and talk differently than us. We saw a commercial for a Texas car lot last night and could not decipher a single word the salesman said. Even with our difficulty communicating with the locals, they are very friendly, fuel is cheap, the food is tasty and reasonably priced and the scenery is great.
Lake Medina has hundreds of spaces with full hookups but we chose a spot next to the lake where there is no sewer. We have a magnificent view of the abundant deer, a tremendous variety of birds and a panorama of Lake Medina. Last time we were here, in the drought in 2015, we had to drive 8 miles just to see water. The lake is full now and it is stunning. I suppose all the trees that were growing on the lake floor last time we were here drowned.
There’s some photos if you click here

We jumped back onto Interstate 10 from Fort Stockton and continued our eastward progress toward Junction, TX, our scheduled stop for the night. Although the road between these places did not go over any passes, like the road between El Paso and Fort Stockton, there are about 400 up and down sections running between about 2000′ and 2700′ elevation. To keep things interesting, there were substantial gusting winds up to about 30 mph which kept me constantly correcting for the effect on the Barbarian Invader, our trailer. We got much worse fuel mileage today than yesterday.
After 200 miles of climbing and descending and correcting, we pulled off the interstate in Junction and found our way to the Junction North Llano RV Park where we have stayed before. The park has full hookups, a pool, laundry facilities, automatic gates to keep intruders out and great staff but, currently, no viable wifi and Junction has very spotty phone and data service. The operators run a very nice park and it is always very tidy. They even grade the gravel roads daily. We booked today’s RV spot through Good Sam.
We are old so we like to limit any day’s drive to no more than about 3 hours a day and never staying less than three nights anywhere but crossing from Sierra Vista to Junction confounds our policy. There are massive sections of open, uninhabited land with few places to stay between southern Arizona and western Texas so for the last three days we have far exceeded our preferred distance each day and we have stayed only one night in each place. We are getting ready for a break with an extended stay, laundry and some shopping somewhere.