Natural Bridge Cave

Boy, the campground here is really emptying out. Our neighbors left a few days ago and we miss them. They were really nice. They're fulltimers from Wisconsin and were meandering back up there for the summer. They said they were coming back to Texas for the winter. We decided we are too. We drove around the area closer to John & Erica and found a really nice place called Braunig Lake RV Resort in Elmendorf. It's south of San Antonio but will be easier for them to get to than where we are now. We'll probably be there for a few months and then return here for a few months. We really like the park we're in right now but it takes them an hour to get here to see us. They live on the southwest side and we're staying on the northeast side and the traffic and construction through San Antonio is brutal. They did come over on Saturday and we had a nice steak dinner with baked potatoes and grilled asparagus and zucchini. John has been stopping by on his way home from work occasionally so on Sunday I made one of his favorite dinners that he hasn't had in a long time called pork adobo. It's basically pork cooked in vinegar and soy sauce for a few hours so the pork is soooooo tender. Erica doesn't eat pork or fish so I've been making fish when he comes without her and we have "Erica friendly" meals when she's here. :) She does bring us the treats from the bakery though and we REALLY like that. She also brought pizza from one of our favorite pizza places Papa Murphy's. She already knew we LOVE the chicken and garlic pizza. Since our oven in the RV is so small she cooked it at home and brought it over and we microwaved individual pieces. YUMMY YUMMY!!!

John & Erica


Today we went to Natural Bridge Caverns here in San Antonio. The name of the cave comes from the natural stone bridge, all that is left of a huge, collapsed room that now forms the entrance. It's only about 10 minutes from where we are staying. We've been in caves in Barbados and Ireland, and two caves in Texas. This cave was the most impressive so far. Someday we'll go to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. I've seen pictures and it's pretty amazing.

Natural Bridge with the opening to the cave on bottom left



Cave Entrance


Inside the cave

San Antonio, TX

Saturday we went to Fiesta Texas. Basically, it's San Antonio's version of Mardi Gras and lasts for 10 days. Lots of places to eat, lots of touristy souvenirs and LOTS of people. Some poeple were even wearing beads. It was so crowded all you could do was shuffle along with the crowd to get anywhere. Erica said the bigger party is called NIOSA (Nightime in old San Antonio) and is more for the younger crowd. You have to pay to get into the street parade and you spend all night getting your boobs and butt pinched. Now, for all of you that know Rod know that I can get that ALL night long at home for FREE! Oh well, it was interesting but just like New Orleans it's something to experience once and that's enough. Here's some pictures.






I told you it was crowded.

Rod was quite the handyman yesterday. Yes, a HANDYMAN! He took off the rear jack that was damaged on a steep campground site at Hard Labor Creek State Park. We thought about bending it back but read on the Everest forum that once they're bent they will just keep bending so we bit the bullet and finally bought a new set. The other one wasn't damaged but since they come as a pair we might as well have matching ones.



Tomorrow John & Erica are coming over for dinner. We're having steaks, baked potatoes and grilled veggies. Yummy. I promise I'll try and remember to take some pictures.

Austin, TX

Well, Rod made his stir-fry on Wednesday for John and Erica. It was really yummy. I had to make the rice cuz about the ONLY thing he knows how to make is stir-fry. LOL It's been so long since he's made it that he kept asking what order he was supposed to cook the veggies. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product and also forgot to take any pictures of John and Erica but here's a picture before it hit the pan (we didn't keep the wok from our house).


Yesterday we decided to get out and about. First stop was Camping World in New Braunfels. We picked up a new chair, wheel chocks, water regulator, marker light (it fell off somewhere), step covers, tablecloth clips.

After that we made a stop up the road a little further at Walmart. Man, it's like Starbucks in Seattle with the Walmarts. They're on just about every corner here in Texas. We needed to pick up a new weather station. One of ours got crushed by a slide (oops) and the other one just stopped working.

After that we stopped at AAA to pick up all the maps for our trip west. We have a Garmin GPS but I still like looking at a map. We got all the tour books and camp books too.

From there we kept north on I35 to Austin where we were looking for the Congress Street bridge. That's where the bats hang out until sundown. Since it was only 5:30 when we got there we decided to go to TGIFridays. It's in the Radisson Hotel right on the river and right next to the bridge. Since it was so early there was hardly anybody there. We got a seat right next to the window and thought it would be a really good place to see the bats. Well, we SHOULD have sat out on the patio because that's where this big family sat right in front of us. We knew as soon as the bats came out they'd be standing up. We finished our drinks and appetizers and left. There were stairs right outside the restaurant that went down to the riverbank. When we got close to the bridge you could really hear the bats squealing. It was pretty awesome but not nearly as awesome as when they finally came out. Oh my gosh, there were literally MILLIONS of them. Well, actually according to their website (yes, they have a website) there are 1.5 million. I think it's up there with some of the most amazing sites I've ever seen. The pictures I took don't do it justice. Just enough to give my son-in-law Todd the heebie jeebies. You really need to click on the pictures to see them.



Look at how many there are!! All the way down the bridge!!



Click on this one and you can really tell it's a bat!

San Antonio, TX

YAY!! Finally made it to San Antonio.!!!

I know, I know, it's been awhile AGAIN since I've posted a new entry. It's hard when you're just sitting around doing nothing to find something to write about.

We did have a visitor the other day. There's a RV chatroom I've been going to occasionally for about a year and a half now. I knew there was a lady that lived close to Houston so knowing that we were going to be passing through there I thought it would be cool to meet up with her. Her name in the chatroom is LakeConroePenny. Well, come to find out she lives north of Lake Conroe which is way north of Houston. That wasn't gonna work out so she wanted to know where we were staying in San Antonio and made arrangements to come to us! She drove her Class B van and parked in a space right across from us. Too cool! We had a really nice visit over dinner with Penny, Rod, my son John and daughter-in-law Erica. No pictures of John and Erica yet (she resists having her picture taken) but I'll get one before we leave here. They are coming again for dinner tomorrow night for Rod's famous stir-fry. Here's a picture of Penny and I but please keep in mind I woke up only a few minutes before Rod took this picture. :)



Rod took this picture of a roadrunner who is a resident of the RV park here. She's up towards the top in the center. She has a nest in another part of the park but he caught her up in the tree with a mouse in her mouth. She was waiting for us to leave so she could come down so we left her alone.

Here's a couple of pictures of our site. Every site here has a little covered patio and yes, that's Rod washing the 5th wheel AGAIN. It got really dirty being on the road everyday since we left Sunrise. They charged us $5 so we could wash the truck and $15 to wash the 5th wheel. I guess it's to pay for the water use.




We're going to visit some other RV parks around this area a little closer to John and Erica for next winter. It does get cold here but doesn't last long. We're going to look at Boerne (pronounced like Bernie) and Fredericksburg. Rod just wants to go to Fredericksburg for some German food. We are also planning on visiting Natural Bridge Cave and possibly going to Austin to see the thousands of bats under this bridge that come out every day at sundown (sorry Todd).

Still on the Road (Just an Update)

We left Sunrise on April 1st and arrived in Tampa for our RV appointment at 9:00am the next day. On our way to Tampa we noticed the A/C in the truck wasn't getting very cold. Great, one more thing to take care of. We knew we had to get it taken care of before we began our trek to Texas. It was gonna be way too hot to be travelling without A/C. Fortunately there was a Fort dealer right across the freeway from the RV dealership. After they finished with the front jacks we unhitched, left the rig there and headed over to the Ford dealer. They didn't finish with the truck until 4:30 so we called the campground and made a reservation for another night.

We left the next morning on the 3rd (Happy Bday, John) and drove all the way to just past Tallahassee. Nothing eventful there either.

On the 4th we were just past Pensacola. Nothing there either.

On the 5th we were in Biloxi, Mississippi. We found out the campground had a shuttle to the casinos so we went there and had the crab buffet at Boomtown. Boy was that yummy. I can eat A LOT of crab.

Today we are in Lafayette, Louisiana and are headed for Houston, Texas tomorrow. Should be an easy drive. We have reservations for a whole long month in San Antonio on the 8th. It's gonna be so good to just sit for awhile and visit with John and Erica especially after all the travelling we've done this week!