Traveling North in Texas-Falcon Dam to Hondo


Rio Grande Overlook on US83
March 25, 2009
We had a nice slow morning, coffee, puzzles and reading. The day got lighter, but the sun didn’t peek out. We headed out to Falcon Dam and drove out to the center. Each country has its own little electric plant. The water is high in the lake with trees sticking out of the water; ducks are enjoying the cover. At the center of the bridge there are two pillars, flags and a view of the water. We turned around there and went back. We still had to stop and get our vehicle checked over and Will had to show his ID, his new passport card. The card has all the information of the passport, but is the size of your license. Handy ID. The road is lined with Mexican Olive trees and they are in bloom now. We spotted a few scissor-tailed fly catchers, a mocking bird, doves, a caracara (Mexican Eagle), and…a coyote!

At the scenic overlook outside San Ygnacio we met a couple from Quebec and chatted about sites and stops of travelers. Kathy shared some Hawaiian chocolates with them and we said our goodbyes with hopes of meeting up once again in Luckenbach.

The morning has remained cloud covered; a good day for driving. North of town we stopped at another overlook where below was the Rio Grande River and a field flooded across in Mexico. Pelicans were standing on the landbar in the field.

Laredo is a big sprawled out city. We hit the Walmart; saw our Quebec friends and continued on our way north on US83 leaving the Rio Grande behind us. Lots of distribution centers and trucks going all directions.

The new visitor center at the crossroads of US83 and I35 is done is southwest style; tiles, arches, and very much like a mission church. We did a little wifi and moved onto the interstate and made our way to Luckenbach. In Moore we took 3352 that turned into Creek 1301; it was sort of paved and the sides were recently whacked clean.

Then we got on to Creek 1515 and on to CR749 following our GPS; wonder if we will end up in a field! The road is mostly rocks and dirt now. We saw several scissor-tail flycatchers; they are so funny to watch fly. There were cardinals and LBBs (little brown birds) too. We ended up on a three-digit road, 462-paved. That road took us into the hill country. We turned onto a real road 173 and made our way toward Bandera. We found a rest area with a view and made dinner and played New World as the sunset and darkness surrounded us. We finished our game with our headlights on. Then we cleaned up dishes and watched some Star Gate episodes before crawling into our bed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Houston Fest Galax, VA

Image
We arrived in Galax, VA and stopped at our friend, Harold's. He was just putting the finishing touches on a cake he made for his nephew.  Harold is great in the kitchen! Brenda arrived!  We had a nice meet and greet. We went to the school across the street with Brenda and Harold and met Linda who likes hugs. Each day the three of them and others from the community volunteer to prepare backpacks of food items for children who otherwise would good the weekend hungry. They have fund raisers to get money and purchase food items that children can manage for breakfast and lunch.  They also get donations.  There is a man in Florida that heard about their need for food so ships items from Amazon.com for them to distribute. They get everything organized then run an assembly line to package items. The bags are then sent to the classrooms where the teachers put them in the children's backpacks so that no one is called to any attention. Time to head to Houston Fest whose mission is to hon
Read more

Navy Buddies

Image
Today is a good day to drive! We drove across Amarillo, TX to visit with Will's Navy buddy, Ron.  We found him in the same park we had met him in about ten years ago. These two men met fifty years ago aboard The USS Platte.  ( Platte  made almost yearly deployments to the western  Pacific Ocean  from 1960 to 1968, including extensive operations in  Vietnamese  waters and refueling the  USS  Enterprise  (CVN-65)  task group off Korea during the  Pueblo incident . Platte served with the Pacific Fleet into 1970. She was sold for scrapping on 14 May 1971.)   Ron suggested La Fiesta Grande for an early dinner, a great Mexican place.  It was fun listening to the stories all starting with, "Do you remember...." We dropped Ron back off at home and met Don, a neighbor. See you again somewhere sometime, Ron. Okay, so check out these drinks that were delivered to the next table!
Read more

Our Own Palm Tree

Image
December 15, 2007 We woke parked at the Walmart; we have a nice spot we like way off to one side where we face a little lawn and have our own palm tree. Not many people park in this area because it is farther to walk into the store; at night a few other overnighters park in the lot, but they park up with the trucks so we pretty much have this area to ourselves. From there we drove to Victor Park, a community park with tennis courts, picnic area and fields for sports. The restrooms were locked, but no biggie as we have our own facilities. Will started up the generator and worked on a letter to the Chevy Guy in New Brunswick he has been formulating in his mind ever since we left Canada. The Roadtrek just stopped one day and we had to have it towed and lucky for us it was to a Chevy repair garage. We had our fuel tank fixed and they cut the fill tube. Roadtrek had designed a specialty one they didn’t have so they just jury rigged one. Fixed they said; we paid the bill of over a thousand d
Read more