Heat at last!

San Antonio, TX – If you scroll back to the photo I posted just two days ago, you’ll see the visual opposite of what we enjoyed today.  It’s hard to believe we have gone from 20F to 78F in such a short time, but it sure feels good.  We are enjoying it while we can, because Tuesday’s high for San Antonio is forecast to hit only 37F!

We were on the Interstate 10 by 8:25 this morning, and it took us a full hour to get from Baytown, a suburb just east of Houston, to Katy, the equivalent burg on the western side.  Houston is one big, spread out city!  I marveled at the concrete loops and overpasses of thruways we had to negotiate before we finally got to the countryside.

As we headed west, we enjoyed the big sky Texas is known for, and by the end of the day I had seen almost the whole range of things you’d expect to see in Texas: fenced ranches, longhorn cattle, old-fashioned cowboy-type windmills, clumps of prickly-pear cactus, cowboy hats (for sale at the gas station where we stopped), hawks circling overhead. And that big, blue, cloudless sky!

Since it was Sunday the traffic was not too heavy, although we had our share of big transport trucks whizzing past.  When we stopped for lunch, we were delighted to step outside and stretch our legs without having to put on jackets first.

While we were at the rest stop, Val lifted the hood of the Honda and used his new battery tester to see how the charge was doing.  It had dropped a bit, so we let the car motor run while we ate lunch, and by the time we were done, the tester indicated we were back at full charge once again.  It was reassuring to know we had what we needed to ensure the battery doesn’t die on us again.

By a little past one o’clock, we were settled at our site here at the Alamo KOA in San Antonio.  It’s a very big park – 34 acres – and two of the young staff members are the grandchildren of the man who established the camp.  There are lots of trees around, and this afternoon we were serenaded by a cluster of large blackbirds that shrieked like banshees from the branches above us!  At first I couldn’t see them to figure out what they were, so I dug out the binoculars for a closer look.  Then I looked up “birds of south Texas” on the laptop and was amazed to see the huge number of beautiful birds that are native to this area.  These guys were just big, black and raucous, but I’ll be looking for those other ones.

For the first time this trip, we set out our lawn chairs on our little patio this afternoon and enjoyed a pleasant interlude, reading our books, in the great outdoors.  We’ve only driven 2,000 miles for this rare moment!