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.

We were up pretty early in order to depart El Paso as quickly as possible. We jumped back onto I-10 headed east across a big section (maybe 250 miles) of West Texas. The flat lands along the road are pretty unremarkable but the mountain ranges in the distance are pretty. From El Paso the interstate runs southeast along the Rio Grande for a while before turning due east. The ground climbs steadily and crosses a small range near Van Horn, crossing over a few passes between 4000′ and 4700′ elevation before starting a long downgrade into Fort Stockton. Near Van Horn, we crossed into the Central Time Zone. The road surface along I-10 is almost fair – I’d give it a C-.
In Fort Stockton, we pulled off onto I-10 Business for the trip down the main drag. Although there hasn’t been any rain here for a while, about four spots along the main street were flooded. We soon pulled into Park View RV Park which is a large gravel lot with a strange characteristic. All of the power is overhead instead of underground, a first in parks for us. There are full hookups and wifi and, best of all, it costs $12 a night with Passport America. The sunsets here are magnificent displays.
We will be departing tomorrow for another couple hundred miles before stopping for the night in Junction.
There’s some pix if you click here

Today, we left Deming and continued eastbound on I-10. A little over an hour later, we passed through Las Cruces, NM. I-10 turns south at Las Cruces and passes into Texas. Not too far into Texas, the road crosses the city limits of El Paso although the center of the city is still about 25 miles away.
I mostly try to see the beauty and unique qualities of things we see along our trip but I am at a loss to describe El Paso in glowing terms. We are sure there are possibly many attractive sights and fun things to do in this city but we didn’t pass any of them along the interstate highway. Interstate 10 through the sprawling city is a hellish arrangement of tight curves, confusing road signage, erupted paving and a 60 mph speed limit. The air, at least today, was like mud created by mixing some air, agricultural smoke, refinery emissions and whirlwinds of vehicle exhaust from the border crossing to Mexico . Directly on the right of southbound drivers as they drive on I-10 is the longtime murder capital of the world, Juarez, MX. We could tell from the U.S. side that we would prefer to live here and not there, even if we had to live in El Paso. We drove through town for about 30 miles until we reached and entered the maze that needed to be negotiated to find our RV park for the night. The Mission RV Park turned out to be located on property that was probably quite cheap because it located almost directly under an interchange between I-10 and a big beltway road called Loop 375. However, along I-10 the freeway ramps, bridge columns and abutments, deck spans and sound walls are visually attractive, having been designed in various Texas and Southwestern art motifs.
Mission RV park is a gravel area with full hookups, cable TV, a pool in a greenhouse thing, a laundry, an on-site high-bay RV repair facility, wifi and very little space between sites. It only costs $21 with Passport America and, since we are moving again tomorrow, it will do.
Some pix can be seen by clicking here