R-V There Yet?

While we were in the San Antonio area, we stayed just south of town at the Braunig Lake RV Resort.  This park is very nice and participates in the Passport-America discount program.  The sites are about 80 feet long, but a bit narrow, approximately 18 – 20 feet.  Fortunately, this time of year, except for rallies, they leave a space between rigs.

On weekends they serve breakfasts and dinners for about $4.00.  The swimming pool is clean and refreshing.

There are two things that are a must on a trip to the San Antonio area.  One, of course is a trip to the Misión San Antonio de Valero, now known as the Alamo.

The other place that is a must-see is the San Antonio Riverwalk.  Located only a few hundred yards from the Alamo, the river winds its way through the downtown area.

We parked at the River Centre Mall which is located on the river and in close proximity to the Alamo.  Warning, the 4-5 hour stay cost us $12.00 in the parking garage.  Below, is a picture of the mall from the river.

Wandering the Riverwalk is a fabulous way to take in the beauty of San Antonio.  Our favorite way to see the area is to hop on one of the “River Cruise” boats for a guided tour.

At many places, the banks are lined with towering trees.  Some of the tree roots clump together to form small islands.

Walking bridges across the river are everywhere.

Beautiful condos and homes line sections of the river.

More beautiful hotels, homes, shops and outdoor restaurants line the Riverwalk.

We passed by many large office buildings, some quite historic.

This river even has intersections with cross traffic.

There are literally dozens of indoor and outdoor restaurants to tempt your palate.  Most are Mexican restaurants of one form or another.  We walked to the one called “The Original Mexican Restaurant“, where we enjoyed a nice lunch indoors.  The weather was in the 90’s and the relief was appreciated.

The waitress happily snapped this picture before we chowed down.

Here, in the Texas Hill Country, it is easy to see the results of the brilliant efforts of former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson.  She had a plan to beautify the Texas highways by filling the land-side with wild flowers.

April is the time of month when the bluebonnets, the Texas State flower, line many of the highway, especially in North Texas.

As we approached San Antonio, the roadside turned to a sea of yellow. (The quality of the photo suffered at 70 MPH)

There are several kinds of yellow flowers.  Along the service road the collection was almost exclusively Black-eyed Susans.

On a side note, we noticed that Camping World is running some pretty good sales on various items, click below.

One day in Austin, we decided to run a few errands.  We went to Pep Boys to try to get our power steering fluid changed and take a look at battery connections.  Failed on both counts.  Their machine for the fluid change was not working and their lift wasn’t strong enough to lift our truck.

I decided to try out Sears.  Sears, like Penny’s, is building new “stand-alone” stores.  I really like this trend.  I think it was back in the 60’s and 70’s when they started moving to the malls, but, with this “new” design,  you don’t have to fight the mall traffic.

The folks at the Sears Grand took care of our issues and had us back on the road in about 30 minutes.

Luckily, it was now time for lunch.  We headed down to the river for a nice lunch at Landry’s.  Once again, things change.  It is now a Joe’s  Crab Shack.  We grabbed a table near the window overlooking the river.  In downtown Austin, the river has been dammed up to form a lake once known as Town Lake.  More changes, it is now Lady Bird Johnson Lake.

From our table, the view of downtown was beautiful with your typical Texas blue sky. The building slump has not hit the Texas Capital as badly as some portions of the nation as indicated by the one building crane that you can see in this picture.

A few ducks —

and several turtles —

The crawfish combo was fantastic. We would certainly recommend this Joe’s anytime.

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Holy Smoke, It’s HOT!!!!

We’re hanging out in the Austin area with a bunch of our RV friends,  The local temperature is hitting about 108 degrees and 114 heat index.

Unfortunately, we are plugged in to 30 AMP electrical, which means that we can only use one air conditioner at a time.  To make things worse, our central air unit quit blowing cold air.

We got lucky and found an RV company, Pennies, RV in Bastrop, TX,, that would come out to see us and arrived for a service call within 2-hours of our call for help. It turns out that the coils needed cleaning and the return air tube wiped down. So, one hour and $190.00 later, we had cool air.

With all the time that we had spent along the coast, the report was that there wasn’t too much corrosion.

On a side note, when we were in the Dallas area  last week, we had a storm with 60 mile per hour winds and horizontal rain.  Rain came in our front air conditioner and dripped on the bed.  It had never done that before.  Well, it happened again when the guy was servicing the front unit.  It turns out that the square gasket was in place, but there were three additional holes that led to the inside unit allowing water to pass.  He caulked the holes and that problem went away.

It may be too late, but if you have a chance to check your AC coils, be sure to do it.

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