November 1-4 Travel from Luckenbach to Bayview Texas

Leaving the Hill Country of Texas and our Rest Area home and
 headed down to the flats of South Texas.


We followed south US 281and crossed the Guadalupe River.

Around Austin we ran into some traffic that turned out to be a few trucks had collided with out much damage, but they sure did cause a jam of several miles.

Love the spaghetti ramps leading traffic in all directions.

Our first sign for the Rio Grande Valley....we are headed in the right direction.


There are few things you see along the way that become farmiliar landmarks as you travel south; this airplane is one of them.  Back in the black van days we parked under it and too a picture that looked like it had landed on top of us!

There is plenty of water along the roads after the rains we have had the last few weeks.  This is actually the old boundary between the USA and Mexico: the Nuecus River.
This rest area is a classic....
The bathrooms are tiled with scenes of Texas.

And the live oaks spread out in the picnic area.  There are also a few palm trees just to let you know you are getting to warmer weather.

And as you get just a little further you see them- the rows of palm trees and you know you have reached the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.

Our first stop was Dixie Storage where we have the MR2; she was so happy to see us.  We missed her too; last year we went to Florida so didn't het to drive her at all.

We took off her dust cover and you could see her smile.

While Will took her down off the jacks, Kathy wiped all that white mold off with Lysol disinfectant.  We had bags of kitty litter in and under the car to obsorb moisture and lots of dryer sheets around to keep the bugs away.

We hooked up the battery, but it was dead so we got ready to jump it.

Opps, had the wires the wrong way and sparks flew everywhere.  We thought something was wrong with the starter or batteries.  We called AAA to come tow us to Momentum Garage in Harlingen and found out that AAA will not come in to a storage area so we had to bus the car outside the gate.  Will pushed it with the van-front tire to back bumper.  Slow and easy we did it.  Just around the corner from the gate Bobby met us on his golf cart and he and Will got to talking and that is when Will realized he had crossed the wires.  We did the jump again with the wires the correct way and zoom zoom!

We both took her for a few spins around the compound and she was running just right!

Our next stop was Buffalo Wild Wings.

Mary and Bob surprised us!  How good to meet up with best friends again.  

Next stop was the Gladys Porter Zoo.  The big silverback was NZinga; we watched him grow up the last 10 years!  At 13 he is now ready for his own troop.  With so much testosterone he and Bangori are now separated from the troop.  Both were raised by humans and introduced to the troop young.  Now the troop has a new male brought in from another zoo, but we understand he is very aggressive.  He came from a bachelor troop.  Little Margaret is all grown up now and took a liking to him, but he scratched her arm pretty good so has been separated.  We will see how this all plays out over the next several months.

And finally we made it "home", Harley's Country Store and Beer Garden.  Jim walked Will over to where he mowed our favorite spot.

There are lots of changes so I'll fill you in on them later.  It feels good to be home.

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