Texas in the cold

[Tom&Shelly]

We are camping at Blanco State Park Texas and set a new personal record! 17 when we woke up a few minutes ago! Ice on the inside of the door frames. Probably a good day to find a museum. Will post more details when our cameras and brains defrost.

Tom

 

[Tony Latham]

Probably a good day to find a museum.

Yowsers. 17º. It may also be a good day to put some thought into a Propex.

Tony

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Electric heater is working , it's going outside that's

Shelly ( Hi, Tony!)

 

[Tony Latham]

Shelly ( Hi, Tony!)

Hi Shelly!!!

Tony

 

[philpom]

That is cold! We're up in North Texas and it has been 11 the last 2 days (admittedly being at home is much more comfy than in a camper). We have also sought museums etc when camping in extreme 110f weather, same reason, too miserable outside.

Take care!

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Thank you Tony and Phil for warm thoughts! Think we made it through the worst. Saw the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg yesterday and the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio today. Tomorrow it begins to warm up and we are off to visit family.

The teardrop itself is nice and cozy at our electric site. The Climate Right AC also came with a heater which we didn't plan for when designing the tear; but we've used it more than the AC. We saw this weather coming from a week or two ago, so planned accordingly. Instead of cooking, we are eating at restaraunts, though we've made coffee in the galley (electric drip, much like me) every morning.

All and all, we are cool, but comfy!

Tom

 

[pchast]

 

[philpom]

Thank you Tony and Phil for warm thoughts! Think we made it through the worst. Saw the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg yesterday and the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio today. Tomorrow it begins to warm up and we are off to visit family.

The teardrop itself is nice and cozy at our electric site. The Climate Right AC also came with a heater which we didn't plan for when designing the tear; but we've used it more than the AC. We saw this weather coming from a week or two ago, so planned accordingly. Instead of cooking, we are eating at restaraunts, though we've made coffee in the galley (electric drip, much like me) every morning.

All and all, we are cool, but comfy!

Tom

Sounds awesome! I think it was our 25th anniversary we visited Fredericksburg and stayed at the Peach Tree Motel. Some neat shops to see! We have been to The riverwalk in San Antonio several times, our first trip we flew down for Dinner on our first anniversary, crazy. Lot's to do and see in that area though I doubt any of the vineyards are in their prime right now.

Fun!

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Finally made it to Galveston State Park, just as the weather warmed up. 60 late in the afternoon with mid-50's predicted for a low! I'll come back later (maybe after we get home) and add pictures and details of each campsite. Our plans here include the Space Center, Battleship Texas, and an oil rig museum. Don't we have fun on our Spring Break!

Shelly must have slept funny last night--she has a pretty sore back, but bravely took a walk along the beach looking for seashells. Poor sweetie! She sore on the seashore!

Tom

 

[Modstock]

Welcome to the winter campers club. [emoji41]
I was hoping to get out more this winter but still clearing out dad's house and stuff.
Next winter it's definitely on.

Sent from my SM-A115AP using Tapatalk

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Shelly and I are still stooging around here in Texas. We are back to north of San Antonio, only now it is in the low 80's. (But we're still cool!)

This afternoon we stopped at an HEB (grocery store chain) to re-supply and found there was a band playing in the bakery. That's the second strangest thing I've ever seen in a grocery store bakery!

Tom

 

[philpom]

Shelly and I are still stooging around here in Texas. We are back to north of San Antonio, only now it is in the low 80's. (But we're still cool!)

This afternoon we stopped at an HEB (grocery store chain) to re-supply and found there was a band playing in the bakery. That's the second strangest thing I've ever seen in a grocery store bakery!

Tom

That's funny! HEB has cult status in Texas, we love a visit to one. They have a great number of odd food products you can only get there.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Shelly and I are still stooging around here in Texas. We are back to north of San Antonio, only now it is in the low 80's. (But we're still cool!)

This afternoon we stopped at an HEB (grocery store chain) to re-supply and found there was a band playing in the bakery. That's the second strangest thing I've ever seen in a grocery store bakery!

Tom

That's funny! HEB has cult status in Texas, we love a visit to one. They have a great number of odd food products you can only get there.

One reason we came here is that Shelly is on a low sodium diet and saw so many good recommendations about certain HEB products. We went to another one today and bought cans to bring back. Don't seem to be too many west of here, which is unfortunate, as West Texas is a long weekend camping trip for us.

The band was actually in an "HEB Plus", so maybe that was the plus. Or perhaps because they also sold a lot of household goods--like Walmart sort of in reverse.

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

We made it back home on Friday, after a few more adventures including a brown-out sand storm near Roswell NM. ("Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble" Louis Lamore)

Here is a summary, including pictures of our campsites in case anyone is interested. First day, Shelly had some business in Roswell (she makes and sells doll-house furniture and has some in a musem there on consignment). From there, we spent our first night at Brantley Lake State Park in New Mexico

First time camping in February, and now we've been camping every month of the year. Nice and warm, high 60's in Roswell and above freezing that night at Brantley Lake.

The next day we drove on to Seminole Canyon State Park Texas

You can tell it's Seminole Canyon and not Brantley Lake because the pavillion roof is brown instead of green!

 

[Tom&Shelly]

We hoped to spend the day hiking at Seminole Canyon, but the campsite is on top of the canyon, and the winds were fierce that day. Also, we happened to be there the one day of the week when there was no ranger guided hike of the pictoglyphs. So instead, we drove two hours (each way) to Sonora Canyon. We felt it was worth it. Had we anticipated the weather, we would have drove on I-10 and spent the night at the campsite at the cave.

Had a chat with a couple of partridges who lived at the gift shop.

We'll probably head back to Seminole Canyon someday when it's not as windy. (Ya, that happens a lot!) We didn't cross the border, but Del Rio is an hour a way, and there is a crossing there.

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Next day we drove to Blanco State Park, West of Austin and North of San Antonio.

Low 50's when we arrived that afternoon, but it was windy and the temperatures quickly dropped to a low of about 17 when we woke up the next morning. Also got a little snow

It had been forecast so we came prepared. On this trip, we didn't prepare a single hot meal. We brought pastries for breakfast, always stayed at electric sites and made coffee in the morning, then we ate one meal at a restaraunt each day. We either snacked or made sandwiches for the other meal. We never used the propane stove and never used charcoal. With the winds, the latter was prohibited at most campgrounds anyway. Oh, and on the two weekends while we were out, we stayed at relatives East of Austin and ate their food! We came back weighing about the same as when we left, so the strategy worked out okay.

Our first day we saw the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg TX, which was my intention when we picked Blanco as a stop. Admiral Nimitz was from Fredricksburg and, when they proposed a museum for him, he insisted it be for all of the American men who served in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Well worth the stop.

Our second day at Blanco we drove to San Antonio and saw the Briscoe Museum of Western Art, which is on the River Walk a little ways from the Alamo. We saw the building on our trip last year but were there the day of the week the museum was closed, so we took our opportunity this time. It was still pretty cold, so an indoor venue was in order.

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Incidently, last year, on our way home, we drove through a pile of debris from a blown truck tire. A piece came up, whacked our teardrop fender, and tore the spare tire cover. We got a new one, with an original funny saying

Too bad it doesn't fit a little better!

Oh, never mind, one of our fellow campers at Blanco had the exact same original cover

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

After spending the weekend mooching off of relatives (and touring the Texas National Guard Museum in Mabry) we drove on to Galveston State Park, on the coast on Galveston Island.

By now, reasonable temperatures had returned, and we spent some time in short sleeves and shorts! We could have cooked for ourselves, but when on the coast we like to check out the seafood restaraunts.

Our first full day, we drove up to the museum at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. We had tickets we'd bought online, but still had to pay for parking. They use a QR square, and an ad popped up on Shelly's phone which stole my credit card number (which she tried to use to pay), then her debit card number before she realized what had happened. Sure enough, a few hours later my credit card company called and said there were fraudulent charges. Shelly then looked at her debit account and found similar charges. (The charges were taken off of both accounts.) So we had both cards turned off for the remainder of the trip. Luckily, I still had a debit card, but this sort of soured me to the commercial company that runs the Space Center Museum. We reported the problem to one of the staff and she said they had had problems when folks use a 3rd party ap to scan the QR codes. Shelly deleted her ap and found the telephone sees the square and offers the correct web site on its own. My phone does nothing when it sees a QR code, so I won't use them. I suggest never taking the chance and, in this case, paying once you get into the building. (Of course, they don't mention that option on the sign in the parking lot.) Really, one could probably not pay at all, and throw the ticket away. I mean, I never saw any cars being towed... But, I won't recommend that.

The museum itself is a solid meh. We toured the mission control room they used on the day of the first Moon landing, remade to look like it did that night, but they didn't say much about what the folks in mission control did or anything

Maybe I'm too much of a space nut, but I'd've liked details like that. You do pay extra for that tour. We also took a tour of the astronaut training facility

There were also some videos, in the theater, but the signage was a little confusing. Of course, we were also navigating our financial issues with several phone calls in the midst of all of this.

But I did do one thing on my bucket list: Bought, and later ate, astronaut ice cream! (It was crumbly and would have been a terrible choice for a space flight. Luckily, the gulls at Galveston were on hand to help clean up.)

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Our second day in Galveston we found the USS Texas, but also found they are not giving tours currently

However, we also found the Ocean Star Drilling Rig Museum, which we thought was very interesting, and informative

I spent my career working on communications systems and space craft, so those museums often cover (or don't) topics I already have experience with. I have absolutely no idea about oil drilling, especially off-shore, so this was all new to me!

I have a short list of things to do the next time we are in the Houston/Galveston area, including a naval museum (hopefully with a tour of the USS Texas, unless they move it somewhere else on the coast) and a railroad museum. I also pointed out to Shelly that Galveston is about a day from New Orleans, so some Winter we have a trip to make!

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

From Galveston, we drove back to mooch off my relatives, who live East of Austin. We took a tour of the capitol building and spent a day with a high school friend of Shelly's and her husband, who now live in Austin.

From there, we drove to Cascade Caverns just North of San Antonio in Boerne Texas. (Pronounced Ber-neey, or something like that.) Their campsite was a pretty nice field with electricity.

We spent two days there, and were going to tour the cave the second day, but the staff suggested we do it the first as there was a large group of children coming that second day. I agreed because I don't like children. Shelly likes children, but she's now on a low sodium diet.

The second day, we toured two of the four missions at the San Antonio Missions National Park. (The 5th mission is the Alamo, which I thought was a Texas state park. Looking it up, it is also part of the San Antonio Missions. We saw the Alamo last year.) We thought the weather was much better than two weeks earlier when we were near San Antonio, so we determined to do something outdoors. And so the weather was, but it was also very windy. The rangers had to cancel the tour of San Jose Mission, and instead gave a talk in the auditorium. But they did let us walk around the grounds afterwards.

We plan to see the southern two missions next time (weather permitting).

Tom