Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Time to Catch Up!







We have been without service for the most part of the last three weeks and it is about to get more definite for the next week. The computer is acting like a dinosaur stuck in molasses due to this weak signal and I seem to lose service entirely and unpredictably and there is a lot to share. Those things don't make a good match so..... Here we GOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
First of all a big Happy Birthday to MOM!
I know we talked but I know I forgot to say it. I guess our business of entertaining ourselves and moving about the country had us become absentminded. Sorry for the no singing birthday call but know that we are sure remembering you now! We'll make sure to find you something special in Arizona, we know how much you love the southwest, and we'll send it along as a small token of our love.
On the last day of March we were still in Austin and returned to the city in the late afternoon. We had missed our chance to have pizza at Home Slice and I wasn't about to miss the opportunity again so we headed there for supper. Now you may be asking, why does it seem so important that he go to have pizza and what is so special about this place. Well the answer to both questions can be answered by your nose. As you walk down Congress Ave. anywhere within several hundred yards of this place you can smell the aroma of garlic and crust being cooked to perfection in a brick oven and wafting about all around the area. I love pizza but I am a sucker for brick oven pizza like that of Modern in New Haven. Now this was no Modern but it was close and they saved themselves but stating in the menu that their White Clam Pie is modeled after the New Haven style clam pie. We had one and it was just damn good. Literally the best pizza we have had since we left CT. Well worth the effort to get there!
We made sure we got thru with pizza just in time to head up to the Congress Ave bridge. Here, just at dusk, a million and a half Mexican Free Tailed Bats, who take up residence under the bridge, head out for the night. It is the largest urban bat colony in the country and it is quite the site to see. Once they start they just keep coming and their exit is very well choreographed and a bit weird. They seem to fly along the edges of the bridge columns and supports, jogging in and out between them until they get to a certain point where I guess they fell its OK to fly out and then they do, en mass. People come from around the world to see the bats and line up around and under the bridge in the park area and up on top of the bridge all along its edges. I pulled into a Firestone dealer just before the bridge and went in to ask the guy behind the desk if this was in fact THE BRIDGE? he smiled as he looked up and told me enthusiastically that it was and that I could park right there in his lot and "just follow the line of people going up to the bridge". Can you imagine though, that someone in a city, just offers up their parking lot for free and for fun. I really loved this city and its people. I often feel as though they come into our lives just for us! We just meet too many of them for this not to be true. If you look hard at the two bridge shots, you can see small black dots streaming upward away from the bridge just above the peoples heads and all along the beam of the bridge just below and all along where they are standing. Those are the bats or.... dirt on my lens. It was quite the site. I guess if I have to explain where they are that means that the shot wasn't that good. Oh well!!!
On Tuesday April-1, we entered the Hill Country Section of Texas and made camp outside of Johnson City in Perdenales State Park. Great Park, great site and Jasper met another home schooled boy on vacation there and they became famous together and inseparable and I caught a butterfly on my face while on a bike ride in the park. The two of them were so interested in rocks that they held an impromptu meeting of the Future Geologist of America, right there at the campsite. I was the staff photographer.
On 4-2 we visited Johnson City. This is the boyhood town home of President Johnson and two sites about 14 miles from each other have been donated and turned into national park sites. We visited both and it was much better that I thought it was going to be. Politically speaking I opposed the Vietnam war and so was not real happy with Johnson but I got to see the other side of the man at this park and it softened me a little. It is worth seeing a piece of our history from all perspectives. We saw his grandfathers house, which was the only house in the town in 1832 and we saw LBJ's boyhood home and we visited the Texas White House (LBJ Ranch) as well. beautiful areas and landscape and I learned a little more about what it is like to be president of these states to boot.
On 4-3 we traveled again and we stopped in a small town just 13 miles from the LBJ ranch.
Luckenbach, Texas - Population 3. If you are not a country fan at all or a Willie Nelson fan at all you may not have heard of this place. but he made it famous in a song and it is a legendary little place that I loved visiting, felt fulfilled for having visited, wouldn't have missed it and hope you get the chance to stop by here some day. This place is a bikers paradise and a musician's stomp. It feels like you are in a weird dream when you are there and yet it is so real at the same time. Too much!
Later that night, after a breathtaking ride thru those Texas Hills and as many stops as we could fit in as we passed many 5000+ acre ranches and not much of anything else, except of course wildlife in abundance and variety, like we were in Africa, we pulled into Lost Maples State Park in Vanderpool, Texas. Vanderpool - You will definitely miss it driving thru. There is a general store on one end of the town and a lawyers house/office on the other and that is it. It is about 24 miles west of Bandera, Texas. Big town, Population approx. 1,170. It is self proclaimed "The Cowboy Capital of the World". There was a "Thunder in the Hills", Bikers rally going on the weekend that we happened to take a ride in to use the phone and get grub so we got an eye full of bikes and other biker related scenes and circumstances. The next day jasper hooked up with two brothers, both younger, visiting on a three day holiday with their parents, from San Antonio (about two hours away to the East) We had the good fortune of meeting their parents, Christiana and Jim and we spent a lot of time together over the time we were there. It was a pleasure to hang with them and make sure that they did nothing of anything that resembled have too's. Hope to see you guys again soon!
On 4-6 we drove from the hills into the start of the desert of Texas. Moving from one section of the state to the next happens like turning a page and suddenly you are in the next chapter. It is like someone drew lines and said this is where this section ends and the next begins. It really is that dramatic. You can stand in one spot and look forward and backward and see the two distinct geographic illustrations. Okay, I know, you got it.
We ended up in Del Rio, Texas which is on the border of Acuna, Mexico. We came here so we could have some phone and computer access but it has been periodic and cuts out often. But it has cooperated this late night to allow me to post this. We have stayed at Buzzards Roost private RV park right down the street from the Amistad International Reservoir. This reservoir was created by a dam on the Rio Grande River as a joint effort by both the Mexican States and the US. The border crossing is in the middle of the dam. We walked out there on the 8th and took pictures from the center.
I will hopefully get to complete this and add pictures soon. We are heading out this morning for Marathon, Texas and will be there for two days before we enter Big Bend National Park for a week.

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