Frio River.
The Frio River (not cold from the standpoint of those of us who come from glacier fed
rivers) is a spring fed river that runs along a rocky stream bed. As a result, it does not get
silty and dirty, but stays very clear. It is really a beautiful river.
The park itself is a CCC
project from early in the Roosevelt era, and it is very nice. If it hadn’t been so far from
San Antonio, and all the things that we wanted to do, we might have stayed there on Sunday
night. This has been one of the best walks so far on this trip.
This was Linda’s birthday. Since we have been married, it seems as though we spend as many of her birthday’s traveling as we do at home. She seemed to have been pleased that several people were able to get birthday greetings to her. Despite the fact that she claims to not want to celebrate birthdays anymore, she seemed to enjoy it.
On Monday, February 28, we spent a long day, doing some of the things that we had wanted
to do for a long time. We started at a KOA in the industrial part of San Antonio, and took a
city bus into town. Our primary goal was to do the “river walk” volkswalk.
The city of San
Antonio is on the San Antonio River. Originally, that river made a big horse shoe bend in the
heart of the city, but it was prone to flooding. Some hydraulic engineer came up with a plan
to build a catchment basin across the open end of the horse shoe. He built a wall within the
basin, and allowed the natural river to be shut off in times of flooding.
Apparently this plan
worked very well, and left the natural river to be very stable. Along this stable part of the
river, the city (with some help from the CCC) built a promenade, some bridges, and some
commercial space. The result is a most attractive urban area that they call the river walk.
The volkswalk that we took included all of the river walk and some other highlights of San
Antonio.
The King William Historical district has some big, old homes that are, from the
outside, anyway, very well kept up. In addition, the walk include a pass at The Alamo. We had no intention of passing by that
without stopping. That was very moving and informational.
I had no idea, for example, that
the well recognized “hump” on top of the face wasn’t added until 1851 – several years after
Texas became a state. Also, that famous face of what was originally the church was
actually on the inside of the military fortification. Those facts are interesting, but the
descriptions of the fight of the Texas heroes were very moving.
In any event, we equaled our record of only a couple of days, and once again spent 5 hours doing a volkswalk (this time it was 11 kilometers). After finishing it, we went back to the river walk and did some shopping and had a light dinner. Just about time it was getting to be dusk, we took an evening boat tour of the horse shoe and the man made basin. That added some more charm and information about the city. By the time that was done, we were really getting tired. By the time we caught a bus back to the camp, we had been going pretty close to flat out for about 10 hours. We got back to the car and crashed for the night.
One of the things that I learned in San Antonio was that I have to be very careful to turn the LPG on for the car before we start using any of the gas appliances. If I don’t, the gas that was in the supply lines burns out, leaving an air bubble. While the bubble is present, the stove top, for example, becomes all but useless. If this happens when a very hungry wife is trying to fix some dinner, there is a visible amount of frustration. Fortunately, I found that by going up to the camp office and asking them to top off the LPG tank, it will purge the bubble and keep some peace in the family.
On Tuesday morning, we packed up and left San Antonio. As a combination of our desire to not get into New Orleans until after Mardi Gras, and the need to check the mail forwarding, we headed north. When we got to Austin and checked at the post office, we found both of the packages we were expecting. The people at the post office apologized, but they don’t know what happened. Both packages were sent from the Northwest on Feb. 23, and both were received by the Austin post office on Feb. 28. That is not great for a priority mail that is purported to be 2 day service. It looks like the mail forwarding will work ok, but that we will have to allow a little more time for the mail to get to us.
Leaving Austin, we headed on up to Oklahoma and are currently staying the night in Ardmore, OK. So far, after leaving the Northwest, we have been in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Each of us has previously been in each of these states in the past. Neither of us has ever been to Oklahoma yet. The same is true for most of the next few states we will be visiting (Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana – I have been to Alabama, but Linda has not). We are moving on to even more new adventures.
