We left Texas in mid-March as part of the grand migration north, Southern Texans driving back home to Iowa and Minnesota and Wisconsin and Canada. Unfortunately, for most the weather was not very cooperative. It seemed that as we traveled north the cooler weather was there to greet us no matter what state we were in. Several days before we left Texas we drove up to San Antonio to turn our Scottie over to his new owners, Bev and Terry Mattenley from Victoria, British Columbia, who had been staying in the same park where we stayed and became smitten with the big boy. They already had plans to see the sights in San Antonio so we drove Scottie up a few days later and met them.
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| Scottie playing with one of his toys in our rig. |
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| He is such a sweet dog. |
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| A picture of Scottie's new adopters, Terry and Bev, the day we said good-bye to him. We had fostered him for almost two months while staying in Mission, Texas. |
That weekend we left our RV park and drove up to San Antonio to have some maintenance work done on the rig. We were there for several days and then we drove up to Bandera, TX, and met our good friends Ian and Annette Patience. We stayed at a nice RV park outside of Bandera and enjoyed the warmer weather and taking the pups for hikes along some of the rivers.
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| This is the Medina River. The water is so clear and beautiful. |
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| Nothing like rolling in the dirt after a good swim. |
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| All along the river are Cypress trees with amazing root systems. |
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| A bridge crosses over the river and the underside is filled with swallow bird nests. |
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| Ian and Annette watching the dogs come out of the water and trying (unsuccessfully) to not get wet when they start to shake off. |
Bandera is the county seat of Bandera County, Texas, with a population of 857. It calls itself the "Cowboy Capital of the World". Bandera was founded by Roman Catholic immigrants from Poland and St Stanislaus Catholic Church was built by those immigrants. The church is considered one of the oldest in Texas and many of the residents are descended from those Polish immigrants.
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| The cowboys back in those days must have been really strong to wrangle a steer this size. No wonder the town is the "Cowboy Capital of the World". |
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| The town is very busy but has angle parking for all the guests. |
The four of us stopped for a meal at the O.S.T. restaurant, one of the local eating spots in the town.
We had a good meal and then we toured the town to check out all the shops.
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| One of the locals entertaining the crowds. |
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| They even had carriage rides. |
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| The Captain 'stylin' for us! |
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| This is the old jail and courthouse in Bandera built in 1881 with local stone and cypress floors. |
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| A warning to visitors who can't control their kids. |
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| We wandered through other shops and the Captain found this one of a kind gift for that special someone! |
The next day we went to another section of the Medina River that passes through the town of Bandera. It is a lovely park, very well maintained, and a great place to walk your pups, or spend time with the family having cookouts on the weekend days.
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| There were some strange looking birds there and they were protective of their area. |
That pretty much took care of Bandera so we took a drive the next day to a town called Kerrville about an hour away.
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| The drive was beautiful but not recommended for large trucks or rigs because there were many twists and turns. I noticed these signs marking water height any time we crossed over a bridge. Evidently, there is a good deal of flooding on the road during rainy season. |
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| Older homes made of limestone. |
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| Many homes sat up high overlooking the Texas Hill country. |
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| Coming into Kerrville. This town was definitely larger than Bandera. |
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| We took the dogs on a walk through a park along the Guadalupe River and found it also lined with many Cypress trees. |
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| Annette standing along a tree showing just how big they are. |
We decided Kerrville was a neat town and we'll probably stop there again when we have more time to see all the sights. We enjoyed several days with Ian and Annette and then it was time to say goodbye to our friends and start heading home. We had to drive back to San Antonio to pick up a part that the RV shop had ordered for us.
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| We got caught up in traffic caused by an accident so we spent a good deal of time crawling back into San Antonio. |
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| Along the way we noticed this large facility that the Captain thinks was a landscaping material plant. |
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| Back into the city. The traffic in this town is really bad and they are doing a good deal of construction to try and add more lanes. |
Crawling along in traffic we noticed a few oddities along the way.
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| Not sure what this vehicle is, but underneath the word soup on the can it says, "Rock and Roll since 1955". |
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| Another way to advertise...... |
Finding RV parks to stay in on the way home can sometimes be a challenge. This, actually, was a really nice park. But I'm glad we only stayed one night.
We arrived home for a couple days and then drove the rig up to Chapel Hill for a doctor visit. Then on to Richmond, VA, to help our grandson, Dane, celebrate his tenth birthday. While there we did some remodeling in the kid's bathroom, too.
After that we headed home to start working on all the projects we want to get completed and get ourselves ready for our big adventure to Alaska this summer!
Finally, we received several pictures from Scottie's new parents showing him on his trip across country heading to his new home in Canada. Thought I would share them with you.
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| He seems to enjoy The Animal Planet. |
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| Tough life !!! |
That is all for now. Warm days and happy times to all of you and we will continue this blog when we go on our big summer adventure. Peace!
