Yesterday we were sluggards. I went to get some propane for the trailer, utilizing the inefficient and bizarre campground system. According to the established procedure which I verified by calling the desk, I was to drop off my cylinder near the bulk propane tank and it would be filled “ASAP” per the management. An hour and a half later, I went back and noted the cylinder was unmoved and empty. Several campground personnel passed by, some twice, while I lurked near my empty cylinder. I called the desk and asked if someone could fill the cylinder. There was assurance that the cylinder would be all filled up shortly.
Some time later, I returned to the propane filling station and found the cylinder still unmolested by staff. Unprepared to await until my departure date for service, I popped into the office where I encountered a very nice but unnecessarily talkative reception lady who made some attempts at phoning and texting site staff, all for naught. She contacted the manager who phoned and texted the site staff with equally dismal results. Soon the manager was exiting the reception building parking lot in a search for his missing or blind and deaf staff. I paid the lady at the desk for a 30 pound propane refill and by the time I drove over to the propane filling station, the cylinder had miraculously been filled but none of the miscreants were in sight. We spent the rest of the day watching the birds and the deer. It was great.
Today we violated one of our not-written-down rules by returning for another breakfast at Schobel’s. Two day ago I got a meal there that was actually too abundant, even for a porker like me, so I scaled back some and we got out for less than$20. It seems to be a great place to eat; we may have to try it for lunch. Afterwards, we took a spin over to a little town called Bellville where we found a real, old fashioned meat market with real meat and real butchers. Of course it is entitled the Bellville Meat Market. We got away for less than $40 although I certainly could have happily spent another $200. We also found a strange thing – Newman’s Castle which is exactly what it sounds like except it is in a swamp in Texas.
The back roads around here are fantastic with little attractive towns, beautiful country between them and animals everywhere, a few of them of the domesticated type. We saw some deer today with spiral horns. We don’t think they are from around here.
See some Bellville stuff. Click here

We were free to explore today. We started our day by driving into nearby Columbus for breakfast at Schobel’s Restaurant. They are not only inexpensive, they have good food. Peggy had chicken and waffles and I had a rather large chicken fried steak that was accompanied by onion-laced hash browns, a couple eggs and two freshly baked English muffins. The whole shebang was $21 and all the food was very tasty.
Our trip to the trough completed, we then took off northeast on TX-71 toward La Grange. There we stumbled across the Czech Cultural Center where they have a very nice main building with meeting facilities, a large library, a museum dedicated to Czechs who settled here in Texas, a gift shop with Czech stuff for sale and a great deck. Nearby they have assembled a bunch of historical buildings making a little village behind the main building. The facility was staffed by many volunteers who were both informative and quite friendly, considering we are plainly not from Texas.
We also took a little spin through Fayetteville, a cute little town with gorgeous residential and governmental structures. The city hall in the middle of town is a peach. The back roads around here are fascinating. There is both imported and domestic wildlife, birds everywhere (although more than a few vultures feeding on surplus roadkill deer and skunks), beautiful countryside and hardly any traffic. We like it.
We got pix of our checking of the Czechs. Click here

Reluctantly, we departed Lake Medina Thousand Trails in Lakehills and continued our journey east. Lake Medina was a great place to malinger for a few weeks.
We ignored the detailed driving instructions emanating from our GPS unit, choosing instead to skirt the entire San Antonio area by taking the outer loop road around the north half of the traffic nightmare. Once on the east side of town, we ramped over to I-10 and pushed down the throttle. All our recent trailer repairs seem to have functioned flawlessly.
A few hours later we arrived in Columbus, TX. We have stayed here a couple times before and we like it because there are great local food outlets and abundant wild animals. We received the last space available in the Colorado River Thousand Trails campground that had a sewer connection so it appears we will get to stay in the same spot for our entire stay here instead of having the joy of taking our trailer to the dump station every four days. We are elite members (although not elite persons) so we can stay 3 weeks without paying for anything but food and fuel. Our spot is shaded by big oaks. There are lots of birds in the oaks. The cardinals stand out like a sore thumb in this green enclave. The sunset today was magnificent. Our satellite antenna works perfectly. We have a sufficient wine, beer and booze supply. We have ample food. We are happy campers.

When we left on this year’s excursion back in early January, we figured we would end up laying low in pleasant weather in Texas. We are reluctant to go anywhere north of the 33rd parallel until it quits most of the nasty snow and ice stuff on the other side of the line. However, we have been here in Lakehills near San Antonio for 3 weeks and it is time to move on east.
Despite some lousy weather, Lake Medina Thousand Trails has been a great place to hunker down and wait out the cold. The laundry is okay. The wifi in the campground is terrible but there is pretty good internet access at the Lakehills library just a couple miles away. Shopping is nearby. Site utilities worked well. There are tons of animals wandering around. The lake is pretty. Best of all, since we are members, it is free.
Peggy and I did a partial prep for departure today. Peggy cleared the way for the slideouts and found places to stow all our crud for travel. I took care of the outside utilities except power and satellite. We teamed up on some minor exterior repairs left over from our trailer’s leaf spring fracture/tire destruction disaster 3 weeks ago. If we get up at a reasonable hour, we should be on the road toward our next destination by 10:00 AM tomorrow.

The strange, miserable weather continues. At midday today it was 44 degrees and raining. At 7:00 PM the air was up to 64 but it was still raining. We decided we had grumbled through enough crummy outside conditions and hopped into the truck and drove into San Antonio. Our target destination was the city’s King William neighborhood.
Due to the nature of Texas roads and ample highway construction in town, our route to the neighborhood was a bit circuitous but we persevered and eventually drove right down King William Avenue. The ‘hood has an absolutely stunning assortment of Queen Anne, Victorian and Art Nouveau residential structures lining the roads of the 12 block square district. Lots of gingerbread and snazzy masonry. A very few of the structures are falling into disrepair but the remainder are either plainly being reconstructed or are in magnificent shape. There are some that would qualify as “mansions.” Being architecture fans, we were delighted cruising this little enclave. The houses in the King William neighborhood are gorgeous.
We eventually found our way back to a highway and even got going the correct direction although the signs gave me some apprehension – we needed to go west and our first stint on the highway was on I-10 East but after much convoluted and disoriented shambling, we got back to the west side of town and on to Lakehills.
Check out some of the buildings. Click here

The weather has been sort of miserable the last few days. Two days ago it rained all day. Yesterday a cold front came through; it was 68 degrees at half past midnight but 41 at noon. Today it didn’t rain although temperatures are still in the low 40s. We took advantage of the lack of precipitation today and drove into Helotes (on the northern outskirts of San Antonio) to pick up a few groceries, RV toilet paper and some dookie dissolver.
We knew from the outset we would be here a while awaiting warmer weather in states to the north and east. We got our trailer spring and tire fixed. We got a new RV roof. We did some sightseeing and some shopping but mostly we have lounged around the trailer. Fortunately, the Winter Olympics have been running and we got to see a bunch of that. Last night we watched the Women’s U.S. Hockey Team stuff the puck into the Canadians’ bottom for the first time in a couple decades. We have listened to considerable hype about Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin and then watched them not perform in the skiing events. We got to see an almost unknown kid win the snowboard half pipe. It has been a good show. Our satellite receiver has worked flawlessly.
We have a few more days here before moving on to Columbus, TX, over near Houston. I hope the weather starts to cooperate because it is chilly now and we are reluctant to go north until things warm up. We don’t do icy roads at our age.
There are many deer here. Click here

The weather has been sort of crummy the last few days; cloudy in the mornings with high humidity which rises toward evening. We have done very little strenuous stuff to avoid getting sweaty followed by a faint odor of cheese.
Fortunately, there has been great satellite TV reception so we have been treated to about 8 hours per day of the Olympics which is nearly half of what we want. It looks like South Korea has put on a good show although there only seems to be snow on the one ski run. The surrounding terrain outside the Olympic venues seems to be brown, mostly.
Today we went on a drive to attempt to get to the west side of Lake Medina. It was much more difficult than it looked on the map. Many roads plainly shown on our GPS and our phone turned out to be non-existent, severely gullyed or dirt tracks which wandered off into pastures and locked gates. The terrain is rolling hills so getting to a high point of land in order to see the surroundings isn’t really possible without a horse or motorcycle. We ultimately used dead reckoning to find our way close to the western shore although we were unable to determine exactly where along the shore we might have been.
We passed through some very seedy-looking residential areas south of Bandera. One homeowner was proudly displaying not less than five toilets in his small but cluttered front yard. Others had their entire automotive ownership history strewn throughout their impalement hazard obstacle course and front yard. Some have truly giant piles of white plastic garbage bags and empty gallon milk containers. We spotted a structure where the owner has built a large second floor on top of an elderly single-wide trailer house. Building codes appear to be optional in Texas. Many structures are built here without the benefits of a foundation. However, we did pass by a few dozen gorgeous places but they seem to be the minority around the west side of Lake Medina, most of them on or near the shoreline.
On the way home, we pulled into the Hill Country State Natrual Area for a bit of exploration. The park charges $6 a head to use the facilities but they also offer a complimentary free pass if you just want to drive through and look around. We got one of those and took a spin down all the smooth park roads. The countryside is beautiful there. They have some small camping facilities, creeks, limestone cliffs and we spotted quite a few deer. It is not entirely “natural” since there is ample evidence of juniper (folks here call it mountain cedar) eradication programs and rural electrification. Nevertheless, it is still pretty country.
On the way back through Bandera, we noted that the city’s promotional sign said Bandera is the “Cowboy Capital of the World” although we only saw 13 cattle all day and no cowboys. We did spot many Texans who may fancy themselves as cowboys driving and walking about who were wearing big hats with brims like carrier decks. They must have found their hats because none had cows, chaps nor horses. We also noted some landholders seem to have a lot of fenced-in animals from Africa and other locations. I understand some of the local ranchers have converted their holdings to game ranches where rich folks and poor marksmen can kill a kudu while on safari inside a fenced enclosure in south Texas.
Some of the poor cannon fodder can be seen by clicking here

We spent last night in our trailer despite it being like walking around in a fun house due to the sloping floor. This morning we disconnected the sewer, water, power and satellite dish, removed all the chocks and supports, hooked the recently repaired Barbarian Invader to our F-250 and connected up all the electrical and brake stuff and pulled ahead about 10 feet.
We then backed into the very same space and leveled up the trailer suitable for use by those who prefer not to roll into a corner of the living room. We re-connected all the utilities and, shortly thereafter, disappeared back into the trailer for reward cocktails. The recent weather has been sort of lousy here – cloudy, some sub-freezing nights, rain and miserably high humidity so we are trying to stay out of it as much as possible. At 90% humidity, just a stroll around the trailer will result in a sweat-soaked shirt and funny, old person odors emanating from someone.
For the last few days, we have been delighted to watch all the birds that come to our bird feeder, located right outside one of our living room windows. Today, during our cocktail rewards time, we had a big gang or herd of cedar waxwings stopping by at a water dish we have installed below one of the park’s many leaking water spigots. They are gorgeous little guys. They can hover. I wish I could.
We tried some photos of the fast moving little zingers. Click here

The last few days we have spent anxiously waiting for our RV mechanic and our insurance company to do all their halting, spastic operations associated with our fifth wheel trailer’s repairs. We could not move the trailer anywhere until some of the work got done and we don’t cotton to having our travel agenda restricted.
All of that changed today. Personnel from Dale’s Fix It Right RV Repair service arrived at our current RV spot just after 8:00 AM and started on the variety of tasks associated with the bottom of our trailer. When we had our recent explosive fun with our rear left trailer tire and leaf spring, more than the spring and tire were affected. The nature of the spring/tire destruction was such that there was a lot of shrapnel that was discharged toward the rear of the trailer, taking out numerous flimsy trailer components before being shat out on the highway behind us. Our rear electrically operated stabilizer jacks were kaput. Many feet of soft weather seals that used to protect the interior from water damage were streamers. There was tire remnants twisted around brake and axle components.
After about an hour, the damaged wheel came off and was inspected for damage. There was some cosmetic damage but the wheel seemed okay so we drove into San Antonio and had Discount Tire mount a new tire on the rim. Returning to the campground, the mechanics took it back for installation after their other work was done. During our foray into San Antonio, more workers arrived and started stripping our old trailer roof membrane, removing air conditioners, operable vents and skylights for roof replacement. By the end of the day, Dale’s guys had fixed the spring, remounted the tire, fixed our rear stabilizers, installed new weather seals, put a new roof on the trailer, replaced all the roof mounted skylights, vents and A/C units and cleaned up. We had to cough up $200 for the tire and $500 for our deductible on the insurance claim but ended up with a new tire, a brand new locally forged leaf spring, a new roof, re-invigorated rear stabilizer jacks and new seals. If we would have been required to pay for this ourselves, the price would have been around $8,000. We are happy. The contractor did very well. The insurance (Good Sam Club) company, despite some slow motion at the beginning, ultimately came through with what we consider a very reasonable settlement. Tomorrow we will need to re-install the trailer in the same spot because when we pulled in last week, the suspension was collapsed on the left side and, now that everything is fixed, our home has a definite slant.
Our trailer looks newer. See by clicking here

It was cold in San Antonio last night. In our campground in Lakehills it was one degree above freezing at 7:00 this morning. By noon, it was 35 and 39 by mid-afternoon. Peggy found a great thing to do to pass the time – she made cinnamon rolls. We aren’t going anywhere today. Maybe tomorrow. It is uncomfortable outside for those of us in the shorts-and-T-shirt crowd.
There are lots of animals here. Some can be seen by clicking here