Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Dinosaurs in San Antonio??

We spent a week at Medina Lake RV Campground just west of San Antonio.  What a great spot!  This was a Thousand Trails campground unlike any we'd ever been to before.  The sites were spacious and wooded and set up on these meandering loops that made you feel more like you were in a state park than an RV park.  This is easily my favorite Thousand Trails park to date.  Despite numerous warnings on the website about limited availability of full hookup sites (with sewer), we had multiple options for full hookups and got a large site near the lake.  As with other Texas Thousand Trails campgrounds, there was an upcharge for 50amp service, but here again we were allowed to use our dogbone adapter at a 30amp site, so no upcharge for us!

So spacious!

Sunset at Medina Lake

Another favorite here: the deer!!  This place was swarming with very tame deer.  Apparently the staff feed them.  It was magical to have the deer come so close to us, and watch bucks, does, and fawns stroll by our campsite at all hours.

This little lady wanted my popcorn

Deer deer everywhere!

And what you've all been waiting for from my last post...did we survive the journey??  Yes!!  It was a bit brutal.  I didn't realize it, but north and west of San Antonio is the Texas Hill Country.  As soon as we left the interstate (still 30 minutes from the campground), we found ourselves on narrow hilly roads...fortunately they were still mostly straight, but lots of steep hills.  A side effect of our broken transient suppressor was that our turbocharger wasn't working and fuel flow was not appropriately regulated to the engine...as a result, we CRAWLED over those hills, cresting some at 15mph (on 60mph roads).  Yes, the cars behind us in the no passing zone loved us so much they passed over a double yellow line...  It was extremely stressful, and a couple hills we thought we wouldn't make it over, but in the end we did.  We installed our transient suppressor and checked the code reader and the code disappeared...so hopefully the trip out goes better than the trip in!

In case you're wondering what a transient
suppressor looks like

 

Working through the floor in our bedroom to install the transient suppressor

This stop was FULL of fun things to see and do!  The weather was gorgeous and we made the most of it.  We biked and drove around Medina Lake a bit and were shocked to see how low it was.  This reminded us a lot of the sadly disappearing Mountain Lake back home.  For those who don't know, Dirty Dancing was filmed at Mountain Lake, and during our childhood the lake was full and beautiful.  However, over the last 20 years the fully natural lake has been draining for unknown reasons and is a mere puddle of its former glory.  So we did some research on Medina Lake, and it is a manmade lake that can get very dry during droughts - it was at 5% capacity during the 2010-2013 drought, but swelled to 100% capacity after some strong storms in 2015 and 2016.  A mere year ago it was at 80% capacity...down to 40% now.  So, while the sight is a bit sad at the moment, it seems that THIS lake WILL recover in time.  In the meantime, it was neat to walk all over an area we could easily tell was normally underwater.

This floating dock was in a bad state of disrepair, far from
its original location.  The lake normally fills to the top of the hill


Our first full day we drove into downtown San Antonio to our old friend the river walk.  It was wonderful to return to one of our favorite vacation destinations!  We're not sure if it was due to our January visit (we've never been in January) or COVID, or both, but there were FAR fewer people at the river walk during this visit.  We had NO problem getting an outdoor seat at a restaurant normally beyond crowded.  It was lovely though to have a (socially distanced) outdoor meal largely like all the others we've enjoyed outdoors on the river walk.  We returned on the weekend for another outdoor lunch and the crowds were slightly higher but still much lower than anything we experienced in our previous visits.

Lunch at Cafe Ole

Another view of lunch

Walking along the river walk

At Aunt Jane's suggestion, we drove up to 'nearby' (1.5 hours away) Fredericksburg for an afternoon.  We should have allotted much more time for this trip!!  On the way we stopped by The Coming King Sculpture Prayer Garden in Kerrville.  This was a beautiful spot for prayer & reflection with a 77'7" tall open cross at its center and lovely statues all around.

Near the entrance of the garden

Fredericksburg is a cute little German town, with German architecture and restaurants scattered throughout downtown.  We headed to the National Museum of the Pacific War (formerly the Nimitz Museum, so named for the admiral in command of the Pacific fleet during WWII who was born in Fredericksburg).  This was a large, informative, and overall just very well done museum we were shocked to discover in a small town in Texas.  Aaron's favorite part was the actual Japanese midget submarine (holding only 2 men) housed in the museum - one of five that attacked Pearl Harbor and the only one still intact.  We only spent an hour in the museum but should have budgeted three or four hours.

This is the top of a real submarine
mounted in a wave-like bush to look like 
it is surfacing from under the water

The Japanese midget sub

After the museum we rushed over to the nearby LBJ Ranch, a national park (so I got another stamp in my national park passport!).  We rushed through the driving tour of the ranch itself and got to the visitor center right as it was closing.  All of the buildings on site were closed due to COVID, but we strolled around the grounds and read the plaques on the outside.  We marveled at the hangar and air strips that Johnson installed so that he could conduct presidential business at the ranch.  Apparently he loved throwing barbecues for various dignitaries.  One of my favorite spots was his set of concrete "Friendship Stones" that he had each of his guests sign when they visited his "Texas White House."

Air Force "One Half" (nicknamed by LBJ due to its small size
- only small jets could land at his ranch) at the LBJ Ranch


Friendship Stones

I didn't realize that Texas had a wine country...but we drove right through it on this trip!  Our final stop on the Fredericksburg trip was a local winery offering tastings outside on their patio.  So fun!

Wine tasting at Signor Vineyards

Our final fun outing at this stop was to Government Canyon State Natural Area, where we saw dinosaur tracks!!  Apparently this is the only public park in the US where you can see dinosaur tracks still laying in place where they were discovered.  It was a 2.5 mile hike into the park on a wide flat trail to see the tracks at the base of a cliff.  We looked at them at the base of the cliff and then climbed above to see them from the top - a much better view.  This was so cool!!

The one and only print outside the ropes

Sauropod footprints

Theropod footprints as seen from the overlook

The true test of our transient suppressor fix will be our trip to our next destination...stay tuned!



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