The Alamo

After Houston we had a little breather. I wanted to see San Antonio once again. That turned out to be a bad idea. Friday evening looked lovely when we pulled over for some fresh air. 

On a whim I stopped on an on ramp and let Rusty run. 

Our destination for the night was a rest area an hour from San Antonio. Lots of travelers fear test areas as sinkholes of depravity. We find them very convenient and a great place to stop for the night. Even when we’re off the freeways sometimes we’ll fly on at one ramp to stay at a rest area. GANNET2 is well insulated so traffic noise doesn’t bother us and we usually sleep well. 

This one has an actual trail through the woods for Rusty, as good as a city park. 

Downtown San Antonio was less than enticing we found, much to our surprise. Parking lots were packed and we could see no street parking. We circled pondering what to do. A walk around the Alamo and riverside dining looked unlikely.  

We were on the verge of giving up when we found a parking lot with a few spots. Little wonder I discovered when I went to pay. $30 for five hours? And that was the minimum fee. We could have paid to park overnight which might have been worth it for someone wanting to commune at length with the construction zone downtown. Not us. 

Later, too late, we met a guy who told us that around the other corner there was street meter parking for thirty cents an hour. Most people don’t like to walk he said. Well bugger. If you are in San Antonio look for city meters between 4th and 6th Streets and Broadway and Avenue E. Not too far from The Alamo. 

Another reason not to travel by van! Spend  vast sums to park and end up seeing not much. Where was the Alamo? 

This is what we found. A construction site. Maybe it was just as well as I have a hard time with the myths surrounding the Alamo, which is the creation myth of modern Texas. 

If you want to know the story they never taught you in school Google “The Alamo And Slavery.”  The actual creation of Texas is pretty fascinating in any event but the fact that Mexico outlawed slavery while allowing settlers in from the United States set Texas on a collision course that eventually led to independence. The Brazil River Valley was ideal for cotton but that meant the settlers needed slaves to pick the stuff and make them wealthy. Sam Huston knew slavery was critical for the Americans living in Mexico. That impossible clash of cultures set the scene for the Alamo. 

Apparently we weren’t here at a good time for visitors so we moved on. I expect it will be spectacular in summer, high tourist season. 

So Rusty and I went for a walk and Layne retreated to do some work in our high priced parking spot. She was going to get our money’s worth. 

The Riverwalk is dog friendly so I will bring Rusty back to enjoy it properly. Green water and all. 

We spent an hour wandering what looked like a giant dusty construction site surrounded by parking lots. 

I think we missed something but it will be a while before we get another chance. I’m thinking Spring might be a good time to try to catch flowers in the hill country and see San Antonio before school’s out. Something like that. 

More I-10 I’m afraid. I have to say I enjoyed the drive.  Weird I know but true.  Last year we took the back roads along the border, Big Bend and all so this year with all the delays we were ready to get going. Rolling down I-10 at 65 mph on cruise control listening to a Michael Connelly novel was very relaxing. I had fun. 

Last year we passed through Fredericksburg a city alongside a four lane Main Street. Lots of tourist shops and restaurants. The jewel of the hill country. Been there fine thst and we barely stopped. 

Texas is weird. Almost the entire state is privately owned so it’s not hugely popular with van lifers who typically enjoy off grid camping in national forests. 

There are tons of parking areas, picnic areas and rest areas and you can overnight in any of them. It works for us as we don’t like paying to camp in a commercial RV  park. 

In the end though the scenery is what you see, there are a few small towns with mechanics and gas stations, grocery stores and motels and the usual small town necessaries. At one such gas station I saw a 4x4 Sprinter painted the same shade of gray as Mexican navy vehicles. The driver was a young man driving home from a family gathering and he was envious of the retired graybeard living full time in the Promaster. 

We talked and there wasn’t enough time to talk properly. It was lovely to meet a young family, him her and their two small kids carefully planning for a future in the road by learning to live in a van in their time off now. 

I hope I encouraged him to think it’s possible because they seemed to be doing it right and it was nice to see. I felt transported to that happy place among travelers where I feel at home. He started waxing enthusiastic  about Argentina and Brazil with never a mention of fear or safety. I wanted to sit down and bask in his enthusiasm. A great moment in the I-10 wilderness. So much so I forgot to make a picture. Instead I photographed a dry river channel where I walked Rusty. (above).

The desert started to become apparent. 

Oh yes. The iconic scenery of big oil mesas and buttes…I needed to see a roadrunner. 

Partly cloudy, 65 degrees, not summer and quite comfortable. 

There’s more of this desert freeway at the communities of  Fort Stockton and Van Horn. 

Houston

I have driven I-10 more often than you’ve had hot dinners, or at least a dozen times in my life BUT I admit I was slightly intimated when I realized the exit numbers added up to the distance we had to go to get to New Mexico. 

We were on a mission and we had to get to Houston by lunchtime. It should have been easy but as usual we managed to turn a six hour drive into a desperate dash to make a deadline. It’s how we roll. 

We hardly saw Louisiana and the Cajun country. Definitely on the list for when we get back. We crossed the Sabine River into Texas farm land. 

I fired off a few pictures from the bridge, mobile photography is all we can manage for most of this fast paced journey on I-10. The chemical

plants of Beaumont flashed by and I just wanted to get away. This is how you make a living on this part of the gulf coast but I find the chemical industry creepy. 

The coast itself is far out of sight from the freeway so the scenery is swamps farms and box store billboard advertising. In short most of it is not scenic. 

Approaching Houston I-10 moves from rural bleakness to Friday midday traffic. We had to come to Houston to complete our travel vaccination program. There exists a company that offers travel vaccines to business people, missionaries and tourists planning to visit disease endemic countries. Passport Health has clinics in cities across the country and they finished what we started in St Petersburg. Two hepatitis B booster shots and we are vaccinated for South America. The shots in total cost us $1300 each including a course of malaria pills when we reach the Amazon. If we reach…etc. Not all travelers worry about getting vaccinated but it’s a big deal for us. Done. 

We had to be in Houston Friday afternoon at three thirty to meet the nurse. That deadline was hanging over us and it was a nuisance. So we decided to have a decent lunch first. Oh and I spotted this billboard as the speaker crisis was wracking Republicans in the House of Representatives. I thought the message reeked of irony as government stopped working altogether with Republicans in charge. Meanwhile we the people keep on keeping on and we had to find lunch. 

Layne had found a Mexican joint, La Cuchara which got exceptional reviews. Google maps for is there. Rusty and I walked first. I am very conscious of oh patiently he rides and I do my best to give him lots of attention and exercise when we stop somewhere. 

We avoided downtown, an agglomeration of skyscrapers from a distance. We were parked in East Montrose and I looked it up to find out more. 

As far as I can tell this area is in the process of gentrification while claiming diversity and bohemian eccentricity as it’s hallmarks. I figure that means money will win out and the artists and craftspeople will be forced out eventually. Call me cynical but I’ve seen it before. 

Meanwhile we had lunch to get ordered. Oddly it was quieter inside with all the construction going on outside. We sat inside while most patrons were out in the sun. 

Layne had tasajo y huarache which is a filet steak over huarache which is masa bread with crushed pinto beans, basically an exotic flatbread. 

I ordered Doña Ana’s beef with mole sauce and it was excellent. I will say it was very rich so when we swapped dishes half way I was glad to get a break. Left overs made for a quick on-the-road dinner. At $30 a CV plate that was a good thing. 

They had a very cool space full of color and art in keeping with the food. It was a great lunch but we had to get going. Those shots were waiting for us. 

Done in thirty minutes with all the checking of records and so forth. Typhus, yellow fever, diphtheria, hepatitis, tetanus, and so forth. 

Texas is a state of mind unto itself. As long as they don’t ban cameras I’m good. 

There was traffic. Of course there was. It was Friday afternoon and our next date was dinner in New Mexico on Sunday. 

Time to drive.

Launching Ourselves

At the Express Oil Change in Hendersonville in Tennessee, an alert employee noticed we were driving a camper. He got a wistful look as I showed him the features. Taking to the open road is one of those thoughts that crosses more than one mind brought up on the myths of the Great American Road Trip. 

The biggest problem, and any nomad will tell you, is breaking the bonds. We are all programmed to be settled and be social and have friends. Some few of us have an unusual set of genes that reject life as lived by most of us. Others have more of a struggle to break out from the circles of settled living. I know I do. It sounds easy to say good bye, to get on the road, to be excited by the prospect of new horizons, but departure is a wrench. 

We drove away from Barbara and Gary in a prolonged silence. Well I said, I feel like we have launched ourselves at last. Up next- South America! Not so fast pardner… Layne said, first we have to see Johnny. 

I think in some ways being a nomad is easier for Layne as she has a highly developed capacity for connection. Not only has she kept in touch with Johnny for fifty years but she has a whole circle of friends still communicating with each other from their time in Birmingham Alabama half a century ago. This  valet Parker found the tedium of his job made easier with a phone. I think I used to wave a newspaper around she. I was bored. 

I gave them time to reminisce while Rusty and I walked a little around Johnny’s neighborhood. He grew up in Birmingham and is the total opposite to me in that he hates moving, doesn’t like to drive but he has the most expansive curiosity of anyone I know. Layne’s photos of Mexican beaches have captured his imagination but would never ignite the desire in him to go himself. He marvels from his high rise  apartment. 

Only Johnny would give me a thick heavy volume of writings by Giacomo Leopardi as a parting gift and then have the capacity to discuss the contents of the book as though he it was who grew up in Italy, where Leopardi is taught in school. 

And yet the precision and mental demands of operating modern electronics are far beyond him. Luckily he has many friends who drop in to see how his art is progressing who will take time to plug in his various devices and remind him of the deadlines of daily living. 

It’s hard sometimes to tear yourself  away and get on the road when conversation is flowing. “I need to get your picture,” he drawls and frowns and fiddles and prolongs our departure by ten minutes simply trying to compose his phone. 

Especially when you have finished dawdling among the familiar places and are now leaping off at the start of something prolonged. However our goal for our first night was a banal rest area on I-10 just inside Louisiana. We have to be in California by the eleventh for Layne’s dental appointment in Algodones, Mexico the 12th. This means we have many miles to cover along the interstate in a short time. 

We started off inauspiciously when I tried to navigate a short cut in defiance of Google maps instructions. It’ll be dark I said but we can cut a bit across country, it’ll be fun. Actually it was a choice designed to make us start reminiscing about all the other times we thought a good idea was the best way to tangle us up. Getting lost at night in a rainstorm in a banana plantation in Grenada. Driving the wrong way down some old railroad tracks in Bosnia. Backing through a surprised Mexican’s garden in Chiapas. We do, from time to time, get lost. 

It turns out there is a place called the John Stennis rocket testing center that sat right across my proposed short cut in southwest Mississippi. This is the largest rocket testing facility in the world run by NASA and decidedly not open to John Q Public farting around in his camper van looking for a missing Interstate highway.  Which is probably a very good thing to not allow. However I can say it was another occasion when we felt lucky not to be stopped and have to explain ourselves. There are officials all over the world wondering how a cretin like me found his way into their jurisdiction and they were only too glad to see the last of me. That I got out to enjoy the full moon and pee at the same time on a lovely balmy Mississippi night was what led me not to notice which direction the wind was blowing. My lack of attention to details precludes me from being a rocket scientist among other things, though I don’t suppose peeing on yourself and swearing copiously need be a disqualifier. We disentangled ourselves from our various predicaments without getting arrested and found ourselves in the Louisiana rest area across the Pearl River just before midnight.  Our journey to Patagonia had officially begun and happily I had a spare pair of pants packed aboard GANNET2. For just such emergencies.