Saturday 3 March 2001 - Tuesday 6 March 2001

Remember the Alamo? Well, it's in the middle of San Antonio, which is where we made for today. Actually, we stayed in Stone Creek RV Park at Schertz (just down the road from Trausers and Sochs - sorry, couldn't resist that) about 20 miles outside the city. This was a record 420 mile trip, so we were pretty zonked on arrival; had a shower, then went a couple of miles up the road to eat at what turned out to be the best Tex-Mex restaurant in the area - La Pasadita. Superb beef and chicken combo fajitas, my favourite.

Next day we went into town to see the Alamo itself ...

... as I had no idea what it was all about, although Christine had been before.

Interesting info #13: The Alamo was originally a Franciscan mission, but in 1836 when it became famous it was being held by a small garrison of Texan troops (including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie)  against the Mexican army in the Texan war of independence. The Mexicans, led by Santa Anna, outnumbered them about ten to one, and wiped them out in a battle which lasted five days. The cry 'Remember the Alamo' originated at the Battle of San Jacinto two months later, in which the Mexican army was defeated in about 20 minutes by the Texan forces led by Sam Houston. Santa Anna tried to escape, dressed either as a peasant or a woman depending on which story you read, but was given away by his rings and jewellery which he couldn't bring himself to throw away. This was the start of the independent Republic of Texas, which lasted for nearly ten years before becoming part of the USA, or more accurately being annexed by it.

By coincidence, we were there during the anniversary of the battle which lasted from 1st March to 6th March 1836, so there were dramatic reconstructions going on in the streets around the Alamo and in its grounds ...

We went to an IMAX film about the Alamo, which was mildly interesting but a definite waste of the IMAX format. This entitled us to a free ticket to the Alamo Experience, a desperately poor multimedia presentation which we'd have been very annoyed to have paid for, and also a free ticket for a trolleybus tour of the city which was much better. The best point was a stop at the workshop of San Antonio's famous toilet seat artist ...

... who never sells any of his work but displays it free to the public. He's up to about 600 seats so far. Have a look at http://www.unusualmuseums.org/toilet/.

In the centre of San Antonio is Riverwalk, a large shopping mall and restaurant complex built around the river. The riverside path itself is very pretty, and extends well outside the city centre - well worth the walk, as very few people get more than 200 yards away from the shopping area and it's much more peaceful and interesting ...

There are four missions along the river within nine miles of San Antonio, with a scenic drive connecting them.

Each has displays and information about a different facet of mission life and history. We saw two, but then decided we probably knew as much about missions as we really cared to. High point: the coin in the slot electric devotional candle machine ...

More caves, this time Natural Bridge Caverns near Schertz which were only discovered in 1960 and opened to the public very rapidly by 1963. There was a lot of water running and dripping through the caverns as there had been quite a bit of rain recently.

Right, time for a few more top tips (totally unrelated to Texas) for those of you who may be misguided enough to follow on and do something like us. First, tools.

Top tip #10: Get yourself a basic toolkit. Bring some items with you if you have spare weight allowance, and buy the rest when you get here. It's tempting to think 'oh, I'm most unlikely to need that', but most of the items you will need sooner or later, and it's much easier if you have them to hand rather than having to drive to a shop or garage each time. We've used every one of these things at least once, some many times.

Where possible buy decent quality stuff, especially screwdrivers as the cheap ones tend to give up under any sort of stress. Popular Mechanics do a good reasonably priced range, available from WalMart. The whole lot shouldn't set you back more than  $100, and will be worth its weight in gold whenever something goes wrong as it frequently and inevitably will.

And for those of you taking a PC with you:

Top tip #11: If you need to sign up with an ISP, use AOL. Unlike MSN and most of the other providers who give you a set of local numbers, which can be a problem if you're outside their range, AOL give you a 1-800 number which you can use anywhere. Don't use their browser though, especially if you're familiar with Internet Explorer or Netscape.

Finally, an ordered list of what to do on arrival at a campsite.

Top tip #12: When you arrive at a campsite, there are a number of things which you need to do, and the order of some of them is critical. This is ours, developed by painful trial and error over several weeks (remember we'd never used a caravan before). If you have, say, a camper van rather than a travel trailer then your list will be different from ours, but it's a good place to start.

There you are - nothing to it. Just do everything in reverse when leaving. It looks daunting, especially while you're still having to go through the list one item at a time, but after a while you get used to it; it took us about three months to be able to dispense with the list.

Wednesday 7 March 2001 - Monday 12 March 2001

Drove about 180 miles down to Big Bend National Park. For about 60 miles out of San Antonio the countryside is flat, green and agricultural, and it felt more like driving through North Yorkshire than the Wild West. Eventually, however, the desert takes over and we started to see prickly pears and other cacti, and yuccas just coming into flower ...

Near the end of this journey we made a small but time-consuming mistake. In Del Rio, the main road takes a badly signed 90° turn at which we gaily drove straight on. After about five miles we hit what looked like the entrance to a toll road - no signs or anything helpful like that - but which turned out to be the border with Mexico. Because of the trailer we couldn't reverse out, so had to drive 50 yards into Mexico, do a U-turn and drive out again, which of course meant that we had to go through US immigration and deal with the happy fun-loving border guards who are just dying to welcome foreigners to their wonderful country. The kommandant had never seen a new-style British passport before (the layout changed about a year ago), so spent about ten minutes examining mine with a magnifying glass. He also asked a number of seemingly innocent but probing questions about the EU and Britain's involvement in it, presumably to ensure that we weren't Mexicans with fair hair and British accents trying to slip through the net. Incidentally, Americans are not very good at identifying accents; if Christine or I are wearing an Australian or New Zealand T-shirt they assume that that's where we're from, otherwise they guess 50% of the time that we're Canadian. Perhaps they don't have as much exposure to 'Neighbours' as we do.

Top tip #13: When driving in southern Texas, New Mexico or California, carry your passport in an easily accessible place. There are frequent immigration checkpoints along the main roads; since the border with Mexico is so long, they don't try to patrol the whole thing but check all the vehicles along the roads that illegal immigrants are likely to have to travel. You could try responding 'yes' to the inevitable initial question 'Are you citizens?', but I wouldn't recommend it.

All the campsites in the park were full as it was Spring Break, the US equivalent of the Easter holidays, so we stayed at the concisely named Big Bend Motor Inn and RV Campground in Terlingua just outside the park. Here we made our second mistake of this leg of the trip: one day we left our awning out and returned in the evening to find it wrapped around the trailer, although we hadn't experienced anything worse than strong breezes during the day. According to someone who'd seen it happen, there was a brief period of 60+ mph winds which pulled the stakes out of the ground, bent or broke all the aluminium struts, tore the vinyl, and blew the whole thing backwards over the roof. On reflection we were very lucky, although it didn't feel that way at the time: no-one else or their property was damaged, our TV antenna was down as the site has cable, and the struts bent or broke without damaging the body of the trailer significantly. We now have to deal with a Massachusetts insurance company claim at a distance of 2,500 miles whilst on the move with no forwarding address or phone number.

Top tip #14: Find out if the area you're staying in is liable to strong winds. If so, don't leave your awning out while you're not there. Oh, and don't challenge your granny to an egg-sucking contest.

Terlingua is meant to be a ghost town, and is advertised as such in all the tourist books and brochures. However, all the quaint old adobe houses are rapidly being taken over and gentrified by the arts and crafts community; we saw about four in ghost town state and all the others were renovated or in the process of being done up, and property values must be soaring. What a disappointment. Ms Tracy's cafe is worth a visit; a small collapsing shack with good food, run by Tracy who left Manchester about 30 years ago for better weather - one extreme to the other.

We'd planned to be in Big Bend for the wild flower season, and were luckier than we could have hoped for. Although March / April is theoretically the right time of year, the quality of the display depends on seasonal rainfall and this year turns out to have been the best for about ten years. The most impressive are the swathes of Texan bluebonnets, but you also get large areas of white from the wild mustard, and yellow from various different species.

There are plenty of cacti around, although most are the same varieties: prickly pear of different types, some of which aren't prickly ...

... small round ones near ground level, one of which is descriptively known as the horse-crippler, and the cane cholla which we christened the balloon-dog cactus due to its similarity to the long balloon figures made by entertainers at low-budget children's parties ...

The more exotic varieties of cacti aren't easily found, but in the area there are numerous greenhouses and botanic display areas where you can see them. It does feel a bit like cheating, though ...

There's also a large number of spiny agaves of different types, one of which speared me viciously in the leg (not this one) ...

... in fact just about any self-respecting plant in this part of the world has a large array of spikes, apart from the flowers and the woody scrub like mesquite which is too unappetising to be eaten.

The park has a wide variety of spectacular scenery ...

... ranging from arid desert to fairly lush areas such as the Chisos Basin which is much higher up and fairly moist. You also get some great colourful sunsets on the cliffs over in Mexico for a period of about five minutes if you stand in the right spot ...

Speaking of Mexico, within the Park you can wander down to the Rio Grande and be rowed across the border by a Mexican in a little boat, with no immigration controls at all ...

... although if you don't mind getting your feet wet you can actually walk across as the Rio is not particularly Grande at this point. Mind you, we understand that when you get there all you can do is buy a beer and a cheap burrito, ride on a donkey, and then come back again, so we didn't bother.

The park has plenty of wildlife, most of it elusive during daylight hours, including coyotes and javelinas (or collared peccaries).  The latter come out at night to scavenge for discarded food around the park's campsites, apparently scaring the life out of people trying to sleep in tents.

Tuesday 13 March 2001 - Wednesday 14 March 2001

Drove north to Fort Davis, a small town in the middle of Texas which arose around a large fort built mainly to protect the early settlers and pioneer travellers from Indians.

It supported, directly or indirectly, over 500 troops stationed in or around it, which must have been a logistical nightmare as supplies had to be brought by ship from the North East (Boston etc.) to the Gulf coast of Texas and then overland by mule train the rest of the way. When the railroads finally came through, Fort Davis quickly became redundant and fell into disuse in 1891.

Coincidentally, Ray and Odette stayed at the same campsite - Overland Trail Campground - although they only did one night as it was pretty small and scruffy. This time we fed them, although it wasn't a very late night as they'd stayed up drinking for longer than us the night before and were not at their best. We wandered around the town, which didn't take long, and visited the Overland Trail Museum which has a chatty curator who must get bored and lonely with only half a dozen visitors per day (you will have gathered by now that we were right on what used to be the Overland Trail which ran from San Antonio to El Paso). 

Thursday 15 March 2001

Up to Guadalupe National Park on the border with New Mexico for just one night, as there isn't much to do except walk up scenic but very steep paths. We stayed in the National Park campsite, which is very quiet but has no services whatsoever. Did a couple of walks through the stark volcanic landscape ...

... up to a spring which supports a wide range of plants and animals and has a very bizarre looking tree close by ...

Tomorrow, on to New Mexico.