Springtime in Santa Fe

April 21 - April 28, 2013

We spent a week in Santa Fe visiting my parents. When we arrived, my brother Denny and his wife, Peggy, were also in town visiting, so we had fun with them for a couple of days. The four of us spent an afternoon at a store called Jackalope, which is a huge, weird place that sells everything from furniture to inexpensive imports from all over the world. And if you're tired of shopping you can watch the prairie dog exhibit outside. We all bought inexpensive hats and I picked up a couple of Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers.

Since we had a nice long visit in a city that we know well, I took the opportunity to accomplish several things that are hard to fit in on the road. I got my hair done, got a pedicure, and got SiSi groomed. We went to Bed Bath and Beyond and purchased throw rugs and some pillows for the RV.

Getting my hair done on the road is always a challenge. When I left home I had my stylist give me my color formula. Since my home salon is an "Aveda Salon," I look for a town with an Aveda Salon and make an appointment. I have had mixed success with this strategy, but it's better than starting from scratch.

We both love Santa Fe. It's a beautiful place. And right now, it's spring. All the trees are budding and blooming. But we were surprised to see that the mountain peaks still had snow on them. We took SiSi up into the mountains for a short hike in the snow.

                                          Our Florida Girl Sees Snow for the First Time

Santa Fe is filled with beautiful adobe architecture. The buildings come in various shades of beige, brown, and pink to match the colors of the earth. The sunsets and sunrises are breathtaking.

One of the highlights of any trip to Santa Fe is a visit to its historic plaza. American Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo influences are all apparent. The local pueblo Indians have marketed their beautiful crafts on this porch of the historic Governor's Palace for many years.

                                                 SiSi couldn't decide what to buy.

There are many unique shops in the plaza area showcasing Indian-made rugs, pottery, jewelry and other crafts. SiSi was welcome in every shop. Some even gave her dog biscuits. This shop proprietor got down on the floor with her and rubbed her belly.

Every time we visit Santa Fe we find time to visit the amazing Japanese Spa, Ten Thousand Waves. While there, we soaked in a private outdoor hot tub surrounded by beautiful aspens and pignons. We had a private sauna and a "cold plunge" pool to cool off in after the hot tub. I also enjoyed a massage called a "Yasuragi Head and Neck Treatment." It was relaxing, but it made me realize how much I miss my massage therapist, Tina, back in Florida.

                                                            Our private hot tub

                             One of several beautiful public areas at Ten Thousand Waves

We had dinner each night we were here with my forever young parents, Irdie and Florence. We enjoyed several meals of "New Mexican" cuisine. But the tastiest were served at their own dining room table in their lovely adobe home.

                                       We reciprocated with dinner in the RV one night.

Next stop, Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

El Paso, TX

April 18 - 21, 2014

When we left Big Bend we made the relatively short drive to El Paso to see Rick's brother, Mark. El Paso is as far west as you can get in Texas. It is close enough to Juarez, Mexico to walk in. But nobody walks into Juarez anymore since the violence from the drug cartels is completely out of control. But according to Mark and Carmen, very little of that violence spills over into El Paso.

Mark retired from the Marine Corps in 2011. He currently works for a defense contractor in El Paso. He met and married a lovely woman named Carmen and they recently bought a nice house in El Paso near the army base where he works.

We spent 3 nights parked outside of Mark and Carmen's house. Since we were parked on the street in his neighborhood, we couldn't extend the main slide-out for the RV. This made it a challenge to live in it since a good bit of living space was unavailable to us. For example, it was impossible for me to open my dresser drawers. But the price was right and it was great to "stay" with relatives without having to significantly impose on them.

Carmen and Mark showed us a good time. Carmen cooked us a delicious enchilada dinner one night and we went out to eat at several local restaurants serving Tex-Mex and Texas barbeque. We spent a nice afternoon in nearby Las Cruces, NM where we shopped in the local boutiques and had a great Tex-Mex lunch at a local restaurant called La Posta.

                                                    Rick, Sally, Carmen, and Mark

When we learned that Santa Fe, NM was "only" a 5 hour drive away we decided to keep heading west.

At Night the Stars put on a Show for Free...

April 14 - April 18, 2013

(Photo stolen from the McDonald Observatory's website)

"At Night the Stars put on a Show for Free..." (Joni Mitchell) (Sorry Nancy)

...Well actually it was $12 per person at the McDonald Observatory where we attended a "star party."

The University of Texas' McDonald Observatory was a few miles down the road from Ft Davis State Park, where we spent four nights. The "star party" was an event where we arrived at the observatory at 9:00 pm for a two hour event which included a "tour" of the beautiful night sky and a chance to look through several very powerful telescopes. There is very little light pollution in this part of Texas, allowing one to see many more stars than are visible in more populated areas. Our instructor used a very powerful laser pointer to help us identify the various constellations and planets. It looked like the laser reached all the way to the stars.

Here's a picture of our huge and gorgeous campsite at Ft Davis State Park. That's our RV behind the tree. You can see SiSi and I sitting at the picnic table under the awning that the park provided. This park provided water, electric, sewer, and cable connections for $25. Texas State Parks rock!!!!!!!!!!

 

We drove the Elantra up a steep and winding road near the campground for some beautiful views. This photo shows the Observatory's telescopes in the distance.

 

  During our stay we spent an afternoon at the very interesting Ft Davis National Historic Park.            Ft Davis had been constructed to defend a trail leading west during the gold rush. Named for then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, it was later held by the Confederates and was abandoned a few years after the war, when it became obsolete. It is surrounded by mountains and beautiful vistas.

This photo shows the officer's quarters. The flag is at half mast from the Boston Marathon bombings.

I was particularly interested in the fort's hospital. It was "state of the art" for the time. The next few photos show the many scary-looking medical instruments that were used by the fort's doctors.

 

All of these photos were taken behind glass, so please excuse the glare from the flash.

Big Bend National Park

April 11 - April 14, 2013

We spent three nights camping at Big Bend National Park. This immense national park is named for the "big bend" that the Rio Grande river makes in Southwestern Texas. It's mostly desert and mountains...huge mountain-sized rocks and piles of sand. The place is really beautiful; the strange kind of beauty that you only find in the desert. The temperatures ranged from a low of 38 one night to a high of 101 on our first day

Rick and I really enjoyed this place. We took four different hikes of varying difficulty, to very different places. My favorite was this one to the Chisos basin.

 

We also enjoyed this hike to an abandoned resort. This is all that remains of the bath house where the spring produces 105 degree water.

We stayed at a NPS campground called Rio Grande Village. There were no "hookups" so we had to rely on our batteries, our propane, and our generator. We did quite well. Decent wifi was available at the camp store, but there was no cell phone reception anywhere in the park.

Being from the east, our knowledge of the immigration/illegal alien struggles that plague the western states was not first-hand. We were shocked to be stopped twice by border patrol agents. Each time they just asked us whether we were US citizens. I guess they were listening for hispanic accents, but I have to say I was really annoyed.

Our campground was on the Rio Grande river and so, was literally a stones throw from Mexico. Mexican nationals would sneak over during the night and leave walking sticks and other crafts that they had made along with a jar to put your money in. There were signs everywhere saying that it is illegal to purchase any of these items. Many American simply left "donations" in the jar without taking any of the merchandise.

 

A "tobacco tree"

Seminole Canyon State Park

April 9 - April 11, 2013

It's a long lonely drive from San Antonio to our next destination, Big Bend National Park, so we looked for a place to spend the night around the halfway point. We were fortunate to discover a wonderful little Texas State Park called Seminole Canyon.

The campground here is so nice that we decided to stay an extra night. The sites are huge and private with water and electric hookups. Reasonably good wifi was an added bonus that allowed me to post this update. We had plenty of room to spread out and admire the gorgeous desert vistas.

This morning we took a ranger-guided hike into Seminole Canyon to see the pictographs drawn by the Indians who inhabited this canyon about 4000 years ago. The hike was beautiful and the drawings were fun to see.

 

After lunch we took another hike around the canyon rim. The weather was perfect and the views were spectacular.

 

Remembering the Alamo

April 6 - April 9, 2013

We're in San Antonio for a couple of days. We're staying in an RV park called Blazing Star which is on the outskirts of town. And the outskirts are WAY out. San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the US and it covers a really big area. When one of the local TV stations gives weather forecasts it has to divide the city into four quadrants with different forecasts for each quadrant! And the traffic is horrible. But we've enjoyed ourselves anyway.

We spent a day touring the Alamo. My eastern-centric American History classes left me weak on Texas history. I'm determined to change that on this trip. Here's what I learned about the Alamo. Texas was a largely undeveloped part of Mexico. Spain, and later an independent Mexico, recruited settlers to come to Texas, luring them with low cost land grants and low taxes. Many people from the US, Ireland, and Mexico took them up on the offer and settled in Texas, intending to become citizens of Mexico.. After gaining their independence from Spain, Mexico had its own internal struggles over whether or not it would become a republic. When self-proclaimed dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna suspended the constitution and the rights of the Texans (Texians), the Texians declared their independence from Mexico, creating the Republic of Texas. 

General Santa Anna was determined to quell this rebellion and brought his army to Texas. He conducted a siege on the Alamo, a former mission that had been taken in an earlier battle by a group of Texian and Tejano volunteers. The siege lasted 13 days before the greatly outnumbered freedom fighters (including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie of hunting knife fame) were all massacred  when Santa Anna's troops stormed the walls and breached the barricaded mission. Having vowed that he would "take no quarter," every Texian and Tejano perished in the fight. But their sacrifice was used as a battle cry, "remember the Alamo," in subsequent battles for Texas independence.

This is about all that is left of the original Alamo, but the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have done a pretty good job of reconstructing the rest of it and presenting its history. It's a bit disconcerting, though, to discover that this monument to liberty is smack in the middle of downtown San Antonio, surrounded by wax museums and other tacky tourist attractions.

 Behind the Alamo is the wonderful San Antonio "Riverwalk." In an effort to prevent flooding from the San Antonio river, a series of canals were constructed through the center of the city. Restaurants, shops, and hotels line the lengthy, below street level waterway. It is lush and lovely. 

Texas Hill Country

March 30, 2013 - April 6, 2013

I absentmindedly deleted the original post under this title, so I'll try to re-create it.

We spent a week in Texas Hill Country. We arrived when we did in an effort to see the famous Texas wildflowers which are at their peak about this time of year. Unfortunately, drought has made this a mediocre year for wildflowers. But SiSi still enjoyed these Texas Bluebonnets.

We stayed in a campground in the quaint little town of Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg was settled by Germans and has maintained its German heritage through its architecture and restaurants. We enjoyed a delicious meal at a restaurant called Der Lindenbaum and shopped at Fredericksburg's many unique shops and galleries. We had to sit on our hands to keep from buying something from an artist named Carlos Moseley who makes amazing pictures using nothing but rocks. Here's a link to his web page: www.riverrustic.com

Texas Hill Country is also Texas wine country. Who knew that Texas had such a thriving wine industry. We did tastings at four different wineries and were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the wine.

We spent an enjoyable day hiking at a place called Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. It's a huge pink granite rock dating from the Proterozoic era, rising 425 feet above ground. There's much more underground that you can't see. It's "enchanted" because it heats up during the day and then cools at night causing a crackling noise that the Tonkawa Indians believed were ghost fires. While there we purchased an annual pass for the Texas State Parks, giving us free admission to most Texas State Parks as well as discounts on camping.

Enchanted Rock

LbJ

March 31 - April 1, 2013

                                 

Texas Hill Country is where President Lyndon Johnson grew up. And the Hill Country has gone all out to honor its native son. You can (and we did) visit his birthplace, the home in Johnson City where he grew up, and the LBJ ranch, aka "Texas White House." The LBJ library and museum is located in Austin at the University of Texas. We plan to visit the library when we make it to Austin later this month.

I have found that, in general, my visits to the various presidential sites and museums have left me with more admiration for each of the presidents. Learning more about their backgrounds and their personalities has generally helped me to go beyond the general impressions that I had of these men based on my perceptions and memories of their presidencies. But not so with Johnson. I came away with an intense dislike for him. He really was a jerk!

Completely putting aside the fact that he was the father of the modern welfare state and the architect of the senseless buildup of the Vietnam war, this man was just plain rude. He used to get up into people's faces when he was talking to them, standing way too close and even touching noses with them. And this wasn't because he was mad. He did it because he wanted to see how the other person reacted and use this to judge their character. He used to steal food off the plates of his dinner guests when they weren't looking. And he often invited people that he wanted something from to the ranch for a night or two. He would send a car or his plane to pick them up so that they were, literally, his prisoner. He would then wake them up at 3:00 am to discuss whatever it was that he wanted from them, and stall them and put them off when they tried to leave.

The ranch itself is quite lovely...everything you'd picture a Texas ranch to be. The Pedernales river runs right through the property. The park service still runs it as a working ranch, selling beef from a herd that is descended from Johnson's own stock. This goat kept trying to eat Rick's shoelaces.

His home was relatively modest.

But he spent at least 25% of his time in office at the "Texas White House", so it had to be modified, at taxpayer expense, to allow him to do the job. He had a short runway installed when he was vice-president, but it wasn't long enough to accommodate big planes. He used to fly home in this smaller plane which he joking called "Airforce 1/2."

Rainbow's End

March 27 - March 28, 2013

We crossed the border into Texas today and headed for the small town of Livingston. The Rainbow's End campground in Livingston is home to the national headquarters for the Escapees RV Club. The Escapees run several co-op campgrounds, mostly geared to full-time RVers. We wanted to avail ourselves of a program that they offer called SmartWeigh.

In January we traded in our previous RV, a 27 foot Coach House Platinum for a 35 foot Itasca Suncruiser. We loved our Platinum, but had found it increasingly difficult to travel in for extended periods. It was just too small for the two of us and SiSi. We also wanted the flexibility to be able to take our kids or grandkids along with us. We will miss the freedom that we had with the Platinum where we could fit into just about any campsite anywhere and we never had to worry about low bridges. But we're very happy and comfortable in our new RV which we have named the Liberty II.

The Liberty II

Since we are members of Escapees, a full-hookup campsite (water, 50 amp electric, and sewer) cost us $16 per night plus metered electric for a grand total of $17.20. We paid them an additional $45 for their Smart Weigh service and feel that it was money very well spent.

We had called ahead to make an appointment to be weighed. When our appointment time arrived we drove the Liberty onto a large scale that they have permanently installed in the campground. They proceeded to weigh us, giving us an overall weight as well as weights for each individual wheel and each axle. For a small extra fee they would have done the same thing for the Elantra that we tow, but it is so small and light that we didn't bother. Our total weight was 21,620 pounds including the two of us, a full 88 gallon fresh water tank, and a half a tank of propane.

We got a good report from Smart Weigh. We came in under our gross vehicle weight rating and our weight was pretty close to being balanced. They made some very good suggestions about how we could improve the balance. Had we been overweight they would have also suggested ways to lighten and balance our load. But one of the most helpful things they did was to direct us to the Michelin website where we were able to get exact tire pressure recommendations based on the actual weight that each axle was carrying.

We spent just one night at Rainbow's End, heading out the next day for a short trip to College Station, TX.