2014 - CONNECTICUT TO TEXAS

TEXAS

Sunday, December 21, 2014 - Navasota, TX, to Lockhart, TX

Since the end of the previous chapter in this narrative, I've been back in the UK for a couple of weeks.

But I'm now reunited with the RV, kindly accommodated by Les at his spread during my absence.

A quick trip into nearby Navasota the day after my return to deal with some US mail and stock up on basic groceries revealed a flat rear tire - not something immediately obvious when driving the RV as it has a dual rear wheel set-up.

But this was promptly and courteously fixed by the garage to which Les referred me - Harris, sitting in the shadow of the new Navasot a City Hall but a place that judging by appearances I would not have taken a bicycle to - and all for the princely sum of $15.

Making the most of the extensive facilities that Les has generously offered, the RV has empty holding tanks, a full water tank, and has had a full wash-down - from the roof to the wheels and everything in-between. And I've been able to get all my laundry done.

A rather gray day as I head out from Navasota, but OK for driving and covering some ground towards my destination of Lockhart, just short of the Texas hill country area where I plan to spend the next few days.

Made a couple of stops in the downtown historic areas of Brenham and Bastrop to look around - both places rather quiet on a Sunday afternoon and with some interesting old buildings on traditional US main streets (as well as some trying too hard to look old for the tourists...).

Reached our overnight Walmart stop Lockhart in good time at 4:00pm, snugged up in a comfy spot with pleasant landscaping beside us.

Good TV reception allowed me to get a full dose of American football with my evening pasta and glass or two of red wine.

Monday, December 22, 2014 - Lockhart, TX, to Kerrville, TX

Breezy and overcast morning, but fairly mild, as we head off towards the hill country.

Although I've not seen many billboard or roadside church exhortations recently, we did pass a sign for "Farm Road 1984" - which made me think of George Orwell's novels.

Getting onto Interstate 35 after the relatively tranquil and empty back roads is quite a shock, with some crazy road layouts on the entry ramp.

All this to permit a detour to New Braunfels to stop at an RV dealership to look at a smaller Winnebago as a potential candidate for "the next RV" - isn't there always another car/boat/house/RV that we're all thinking about? The specific model I was interested in has just been sold and taken away, even though still shown on the dealer's website. But a quick tour of a similar unit in their lot makes me feel that it would be just a little too compact.

Diesel fill-up before leaving New Braunfels, the price now $2.99 a gallon, down from the $4.25 a gallon of my first fill-up at the end of August - though with regular unleaded below $2.00 a gallon, diesel is still at a considerable premium to gas.

Back on smaller roads again from New Braunfels to Boerne, getting very quickly into hilly terrain - very dry looking, with a lot of loose stone on the surface of scrubby pasture and slopes.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, it looks rather as Texas countryside does in the movies...

Extensive residential development in evidence along the road, as well as every kind of design of ranch entry gate from the simple to the elaborate - must be important to have a formal entry off the highway, no matter how humble the property to which it leads. Maybe it's some kind of personal statement...

Boerne rather disappointingly scruffy and touristy along its single main drag, so decided to press on to Bandera - a little more interesting, start of the Great Western Cattle Trail that ran to Dodge City, Kansas, the first herd blazing the trail in 1974 and the last herd making the trip in 1894. Estimated some 7 million head of longhorn cattle were driven up the trail over that time.

From Bandera on to Medina, and from Medina heading north to Kerrville the road was as steep and twisting as you would find anywhere.

The 15mph speed warning was entirely justified in the RV, and I wouldn't like to have been driving anything longer around some of the tighter bends.

Kerrville is large and fairly characterless... but it does have another RV dealership (!) where I looked quite seriously at an identical model RV to mine with a slightly different floorplan - a fixed corner bed and a permanent table with U-shaped seating in the lounge area.

Food for thought here in my customary Walmart parking lot...

Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - Kerrville, TX, to Lost Maples State Natural Area, TX

Rather windy in the early hours, with rain along with the wind around 6:00am.

However, I judged that the leading edge of the cold front had passed through as rain eased and skies cleared a little just after 7:00am - temperature also falling to mid 40s - so decided to chance a run before the further rain that remained in the forecast.

After some brief brightness during my run, clouds did indeed roll in again with intermittent rain and temperatures continued to fall. All rather dismal, so rather than sit huddled in a cold box in a Walmart parking lot I drove a whole 250 yards down the road to Starbucks and camped out there for an hour and a half, recharging the laptop and getting some e-mails out.

With a cold night ahead, and continuing gray weather, I thought I would slip a short distance out of town to a state park for the night but - as has happened on more than one occasion - I rethought this plan while driving and, pulling over and consulting the map, decided to actually drive about 40 miles into tomorrow's itinerary and go to another state park (or State Natural Area, as it's officially known) called Lost Maples, just north of Vanderpool.

Unexpectedly, after leaving Kerrville the weather lifted a little and some blue sky and sun appeared.

Much of the drive along winding switchback roads, much of the route criss-crossing back and forth over the course of the Guadeloupe River - very pleasant, with hardly any traffic to boot.

After heavy rain this road must be quite treacherous though, judging by the numerous signs warning of possible flooding at the many dips where the road crossed back and forth over the winding course of the river.

Comfortably set up for the night in the canyon bowl that is Lost Maples State Natural Area ("lost" as the maples here are relics of a prehistoric age when the climate was wetter and cooler, surviving in the canyon carved by the Sabinal River that protects them from hot summer temperatures and drying winds).

Sushi for supper. No cell signal; no TV signal; few neighbors. It should be a quiet night.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - Lost Maples State Natural Area to Kerrville, TX

It was indeed a quiet night, and chilly - only a few degrees above freezing outside by dawn, but comfortably warm inside the RV as I had let the heat run at a low level all night.

Initially cloudy, when the forecast was for bright sunshine, but the skies cleared before we left the park - after a brisk stroll to see the maples and the Sabinal River that had carved out the canyon that allowed them to survive.

Moved out just after 9:00am, heading through nearby Vanderpool (blink and you'd miss it) on our way to Utopia on a scenic drive along very quiet roads, ranches scattered along the route with their impressive entrance gates and most with an icon representing the ranch - I guess something of a hang over from the days of branding cattle.

Utopia seems rather optimistically named, as it's now little more than a collection of worn looking businesses or vacant buildings strung out along a dusty main street.

But someone in town has a sense of humor, with a clothes store called "Rowdy Lola" right next to the Justice of the Peace. And a real estate office and Gospel tabernacle on the other side. What more could a town want?

Passed "Utopia Park" on the way out of town towards Leakey, but it really didn't look as if anyone had been through those particular gates to the park beyond in quite a while.

Leakey, another town strung out along a dusty main road, seems an amusing name for a town but is actually named after an early pioneer from the last quarter of the 19th century, John Leakey.

This does, however, mean that some of the local businesses have rather unfortunate names, such as Leakey Welding.

From Leakey, we headed along Farm Road 337 back towards Vanderpool, having made a loop through this most scenic part of the hill country.

Quite some elevation changes on this road, and seriously tight turns on steep gradients.

This road seems to be pretty much the Texas hill country version of the Skyline Drive in Virginia, in terms of the panoramas to be seen over surrounding coutryside, except that there are very few areas where you can pull off the road to admire the view.

Ended the day going back over our route from yesterday afternoon to Kerrville, where we topped up on fuel before heading to the Kerrville Schreiner State Park on the banks of the Guadeloupe River to plug into shorepower (and therefore unlimited heat) for another cold night in prospect.

Thursday, December 25, 2014 - Kerrville, TX, to Marble Falls, TX

Temperatures well below forecast, showing 22 degrees outside at 7:00am - Merry Christmas...!

Left the park around 10:00am, drove to Starbucks in town for a seasonal (and overly sweet) peppermint mocha, fired off a few Merry Christmas e-mails and then called my sister Diane in the UK who was hosting the family for Christmas Day.

With the day warming nicely under blue skies, I left Kerrville for the relatively short drive up to Fredericksburg for a stroll around this insistently "Germanic" town.

The historic Main Street in Fredericksburg was just a little touristy, but all done quite well and it was nice to be somewhere that was clean, upbeat and clearly prospering.

Fairly inevitably on Christmas Day morning everything was closed, and few people or cars were out on the street, most ordinary people probably in church or eating - or somewhere between the two - but the empty streets did have the benefit that I didn't have to duck and dive or wait for people to move out of shot to get my photos.

Trivia item: Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the US Pacific fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was born in Fredericksburg, commemorated by an historical plaque outside the house he was born in and the Admiral Nimitz museum just across the street.

Walking north up the main street of Fredericksburg the centerpiece of the town park is a "Christmas Pyramid", a slightly different (and German, so it is claimed) take on the traditional Christmas tree.

A plaque conveniently explains this Christmas tree's origins.

Enjoyed my Christmas turkey feast while parked in Frederickburg - turkey salad in a croissant - before driving on to the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area to walk off this rather modest Christmas meal.

The Enchanted Rock in question is a colossal mound of pink granite, 400ft high, known as a "batholith", and which geologists claim is a billion years old.

And quite some post-Christmas-lunch walk it turned out to be, heading round to the far side of the base of the rock, then up the fairly steep and smooth sides to the summit.

Rather spooky getting up close to huge slabs that have fractured from the main mass and look as if they could slide off at any moment. Although smooth on the main southern face, the top has a number of depressions in the rock that have allowed isolated clumps of vegetation, and even the odd tree, to grow. On the way down on the western side, huge boulders some 12-15 feet tall sit strangely isolated as if placed there by some giant hand as sculptural pieces.

The final hour's drive of the day was not as scenic as billed, and the GPS insisted on taking me across the wide Colorado River to the wrong side of Marble Falls - which is not as attractive a town as it sounds - before I realized the error, thus requiring me to cross back over the Colorado River a second time to seek out our Walmart parking lot.

So all in all, rather an anti-climactic end to an otherwise quite memorable Christmas Day.

Friday, December 26, 2014 - Marble Falls, TX, to San Antonio, TX

By contrast with yesterday, very mild this morning, though overcast.

In fact, not long after leaving Marble Falls on our way to Austin we started to get a little drizzle and wet roads, with even lower clouds ahead so I stopped to put the bike inside to keep the worst of the road grime off it.

Arrived in Austin around 10:00am and the city was very quiet, mainly as the downtown area is dominated by state government and with all offices closed there was little activity.

After parking on a meter close to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, I decided that I would visit the Capitol building first and then look at the museum on the way back to the RV.

A walk of just a few blocks took me to the Texas State Capitol Building, an impressive mass of red granite set in pleasantly landscaped grounds.

Inside, the sense of solidity continues, with a symmetrical design of substantial wings leading off the central rotunda and dome, expansive marble floors, and two large chambers, one for the Senate and one for the House of Representatives. The building is impressive in its fine detail, even down to the door hinges.

The building was extensively renovated in 1990-95 and returned it to its original appearance at the same time as it was extended (very cleverly below ground level, full length skylights hidden behind box hedging) to accommodate an overcrowding problem.

Walked back in light drizzle to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum where I debated either spending time there or heading for San Antonio, where the weather was forecast to brighten early afternoon.

While mulling this over in the museum foyer, I drifted into an exhibit area containing the remains of the French ship La Belle, one of four sent over from France in the late 17th century to colonize the lower Mississippi.

The expedition was ultimately a failure, due to piracy, poor navigation, disease, rebellion, local Indian and Spanish attacks - the single remaining ship of the expedition, La Belle, being lost in a storm while at anchor off Matagorda Bay.

However, much of the structure and contents of the ship were preserved in the mud of the bay and after discovery of the wreck in the 1990s, the remains of the ship and its substantial range of contents have been raised and are being systematically preserved.

The reconstruction of the ship has been helped considerably by the fact that the major timbers are all numbered as it had originally been intended that the ship would be transported in pieces in the hold of another ship and assembled once on this side of the Atlantic.

The presentation of the ship and artifacts is impressive, but 45 minutes was enough to remind me how tiring it can be wandering around museums, so I decided this would be sufficient museum-ing for the day and headed off to San Antonio and the Alamo, and a weather forecast for the sun to make an appearance during the latter part of the afternoon.

The sun was indeed shining by the time I arrived in San Antonio and had worked my way through the dense traffic in the center of town, eventually finding somewhere to park the RV.

And the sun, plus the holiday, seemed to have brought out thousands of tourists.

In retrospect, this was probably one of the worst days I could have chosen to go to the Alamo, a very small building and for which the entry line went round the block before then snaking back and forth beside the "shrine" itself.

Too much to line up for, so after a brief wander round the other remaining building from that era, the Long Barracks (also a museum depicting the history of the Alamo), I decided to head instead for the San Jose mission a few miles south on the outskirts of the city...

...where I was delighted to find that there was much of the mission preserved, looking very photogenic in the late afternoon sun, no line to deal with and far fewer people creeping unwittingly into the frame of my photos.