Day 3,4,&5: David

We left New Orleans on Sunday after eating at Katie’s restaurant. They were doing a fine job of managing her restaurant, and I’m still waiting for her to cook for me like they did J. The splash guard fell off the bottom of the car, we got it fixed and continued to my home-town, Houston! We stayed with our family friend’s, the Anthises (Anthis’s?). It was really great seeing them (thank you so much for letting us stay with you!).

Yesterday we drove to San Antonio, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. We stopped at Buc-ee’s, a Texas tradition, we’re told.  The bathrooms we’re very clean. Every billboard for gas stations along I-10 boasted the cleanliness of  their restrooms. I wish that tradition would make its way up to NC.  We also noticed the abundance of Texas pride, as most signs had the state shape, flag, or the lone star on them. The Riverwalk was awesome, and so was The Alamo. Turns out the Texans actually lost the battle of the Alamo…who knew!? I really liked that the history was a celebration of both Texans and Tejanos (Mexican Texans) and their unity in gaining independence for Texas the 1830s. I love all of the Bilingualism in Texas too. 95.1 on the radio in San Antonio (I think), is a Spanish channel! We got the full San Antonio experience, with traffic on 281 N doubling the length of our drive to the campsite, Lazy R&R Cove in Spring Branch, TX. It was really pretty, right next to the Guadalupe River and Canyon Lake. I had a close call with a chicken snake, but I don’t think their poisonous. They do, however, look and act like rattle snakes. The snake pretended to rattle its tail, but it made no noise. We got one of the more permanent RV campers to come down and cut its head off with a hoe. We had been debating whether to do it or not since we couldn’t tell if it was poisonous, and didn’t want to kill a harmless snake. But since there were two dogs at the camp, we did it for their safety. It was fun getting to meet some of the interesting campers there too. We had some neighbors, law students from a school in San Antonio with a golden retriever named Cowgirl. Our first night camping, we had a snake, and of course, rain. It rained all night. We stayed dry, but had a few puddles on the inside of our tent because we have the rain fly for a much smaller tent.

The Snake is in the top picture if you can make it out.

Tuesday: we got up at 6, packed up the car, and left for Carlsbad Caverns at 6:45.  We are currently en route, and Katie has successfully passed her first Tractor-trailer on a two lane highway. The other side of our splash guard sounds like it’s falling out. I might become an auto-mecanic with some zip ties overnight.