Kerrville, Texas - Sat., Aug. 23, 2014

Happy birthday to my son, Michael, who is 35 today! Michael you are a delight to be around, very down-to-earth, funny, gentle, dependable, smart, eclectic, and logical. Bob and I have enjoyed watching you grow and become who you are today. I wish we lived closer so we could go out to celebrate with you.

* * * * * * * * *

It's summer in Texas which means we've got to get up early to go outside for our exercise. Bob headed out to train with his San Antonio marathon group and ran four miles.

I met Susan at her house at 6:30 a.m. for a 66-mile drive to Kerrville, Texas for this morning's Volksmarch. Her son, Kyle, came with us. We started our 10K (6.2 mile) walk at Inn of the Hills at 8:05 a.m. The first part of our walk was along the Guadalupe River where we saw tennis courts, a pool, a park and a restaurant at the river's edge.

The first real point of interest was Riverside Nature Center with its xeriscaped grounds, Texas tallgrass prairie exhibit, and butterfly garden.

Xeriscape garden in Nature Center parking lot

Xeriscape plants like it dry and hot

 

A Native Garden, Native Plant Society of Texas

After a quick loop around the nature center, we entered the River Trail from the Nature Center parking lot. A stand of bamboo grew along the trail.

Bamboo along the River Trail in Kerrville

From the first pedestrian bridge, we had a lovely view of the Guadalupe River.

Guadalupe River

On our walk around Tranquility Island we saw a man feeding a squirrel. As soon as the squirrel took the food, it darted away to a rock where it posed with its food.

Squirrel with food racing away.

Here's the squirrel with breakfast.

Tranquility Island in the middle of the Guadalupe River is a beautiful place, lined with cypress trees. Since we were here two years ago, there is a new paved path across the island.

Old path and new path on Tranquility Island

Bark pattern on a Cypress tree

Guadalupe River with Tranquility Island on the left.

In the photo below Susan is pointing out cypress tree pine cones to her son, Kyle.

Agave (Century plant) in bloom behind Kerrville Library

Flowers in downtown planter

From Tranquility Island we climbed the stairs up to downtown Kerrville which has some beautiful historic buildings.

Captain Charles Schreiner's "home"

Detail of concrete work on the Schreiner home

St. Peter's Episcopal Church

We wanted to find the labyrinth at the church.  It was located in front of the arched entryway.

Susan walking the labyrinth

"Uh-oh, now where do I go?"

Beautiful zinnias

Rain lilies

Oldest family-owned barber shop in Texas

The rest of our walk zig-zagged through one of Kerrville's neighborhoods. We finished our walk in exactly two hours.

The three of us were hungry. We drove 1/2 block to our favorite fast food taco restaurant, Taco Casa. Bob and I love Taco Casa's tostadas. I had two regular tostadas and Susan had one super tostada. Kyled enjoyed his Chilada. It was as good as I remembered.

We drove back to San Antonio and I was home by noon. When Bob returned from his errands, we shopped at Men's Wearhouse, then had lunch at La Madeleine.

After lunch we went to see "A Most Wanted Man" with Philip Seymour Hoffmanand Rachel McAdams. Big lunch + dark movie theater = one snoozin' Susan. I slept through about the first third of the movie. Bob kept waking me up, but I didn't stay awake until I had missed most of the set up of the story. I definitely want to see it again so I can watch the rest of the movie.

All the best to you. Travel Bug out.

"X" Revisited plus Update on Rally -- Sun., Apr. 29

Fort Worth, Texas:

Zipper, a great invention that replaced hooks and eyes and, in some instances, buttons and buttonholes. Instead of individually fastening hooks and eyes, you do one zip and you are securely in your clothes!

The other Zipper that I love is a ride at a fair. You are locked into a cage with a lap bar. Before the ride starts, you can rock your cage and get it going around 360 degrees. My sister and I love this ride. When your cage is spinning at the beginning and the ride starts you spin around and around with great centrifugal force. We scream and scream, but love every minute of it! And no, we don't get motion sickness.

ZZZZZZ's equal Bob's head hitting the pillow after a day of driving, hiking, anytime he watches sports or starts to read a book, or when I'm driving and he's a passenger.

The A-to-Z Blogging Challenge for the month of April is finished. Now I've done my ABCs, tell me what you think of me.

Update on our status: I could not do laundry last night as we didn't have quarters. Bob went into town but apparently no one would sell him quarters. (Must have been a busy laundry night somewhere!) I did laundry this morning and had the laundry room to myself.

Bob had the pick up truck weighed on Friday, and the truck/5th wheel combination weighed this morning. Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams weigh each wheel of the tow combination independently. They want us to make sure we're towing a safe weight for our pick up's towing capacity. Our tow combination passed with flying colors. We were about 1,500 pounds underweight. Now we can stock up for gate guarding and not worry about overloading. They suggested we might lower our tire pressure a bit.

This morning, we moved our RV back to Armadillo Junction RV Park in Ingram. We have reservations for two nights.

My Escape pod started making scary noises today. When I shift from park to drive, then turn the steering wheel, it makes a loud clunking noise. I hope nothing is wrong with my steering or suspension. This evening, the air bag light came on after a couple of loud clunks. Uh-oh.

Driving around Texas, I've made a few observations about how Texas is different from Oregon.

1. In certain areas there are long frontage roads next to freeways. You need to know ahead of time what exit you need because you may have to go a mile on a frontage road to get to your destination. If you miss your exit, it may be three or more miles to turn around and get back to where you wanted to be.
2. Many, many goats being raised. In one town the headline on the local paper was "Goat Cook-Off." I don't think they meant old goats cooking.
3. Texas has Mesquite trees, cotton and pecan orchards, Oregon does not.
4. Texas is huge...it takes a long time to drive across it from west to east or vice versa. You can drive across Oregon in one day.
5. There are exotic animal ranches. These ranches are helping repopulate some of the endangered species from Africa, India, Pakistan. They allow controlled hunting on most ranches.
6. The speed limits are 75-80 mph on unpopulated stretches of freeway, 65-70 mph on US and state highways (lower speed limits through cities).
7. There are nice picnic areas along interstates, US, state, county, farm-to-market roads, etc.
8. Scads of historic markers; it seems like a third of them tell about cemeteries.
9. Gas is cheaper. We saw gas for $3.49/gallon today.
10. They use "ma'am" as a sign of respect.

We are in the South, y'all.

That's all I can think of for now. Travel Bug out.