Visiting Family in San Marcos Texas

April 5-15, 2025                                                             Most Recent Posts:
Pecan River RV Park                                             4 Days in New Orleans
San Marcos Texas                                        The Museum Saved The Little Room

APRIL 5

Saturday April 5th was a long driving day.  I left New Orleans and drove 327 miles in wind, rain and road construction.  Thank goodness for the steering stabilizers and Koni shocks David put on the rig as up grades years ago.    The last 1/3 of the drive was the worst on I-10 in Texas where I encountered miles of narrow lanes with cement barriers and no shoulders.  Semis on my left, cement barrier on my right.   White knuckles in front of me.

I arrived at Houston East RV Park in time to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final 4 on their cable.   Almost made the rough day worth it.

APRIL 6

Next morning I was up early and on the road to get through Houston with the least amount of traffic possible.  I’d planned this so I could go through Houston early Sunday morning.  The roads through Houston were also in terrible shape and under construction with no shoulders, just the white lane line right up next to cement barriers.    But as hoped for, traffic was doable.

I arrived in the early afternoon to check into Pecan Riverside RV Park. Just in time to get hooked up and watch the Women’s NCAA Championship Game at 2pm.  The light coming in the front window doesn’t help but you can see them on the screen.  My team didn’t win but they went all the way to the championship which for a rebuilding year was great.

Later in the day I made plans with David’s older brother Roger and his daughter, my niece, Amy.

APRIL 7

Unfortunately for me, I picked the wrong year to come to the hill country of Texas to see the fantastic display of Bluebonnets.  It seems they had so little rain this year that the areas well known for Bluebonnet displays, like Fredericksburg Texas where I go next, are a bust

Thankfully my niece Amy is a big outdoors person, hiking, biking,  canoeing and a great photographer.  She knew a spot within an hour of San Marcos where I could see a field of Bluebonnets.   She met me at the park and took me there.  It really really helps to have a local to show you around.  I would never have found these without her and would have been so disappointed not to have seen the famous Bluebonnets.   Aren’t they beautiful!

I hope she will chime in with the name of this place we went.  It’s been a month now and I don’t have it in my journal.

I was surprised to see that they are not very tall.  I was thinking lupines.  But oh that color.

Here’s Amy giving a wave to my daughter Carrie, her cousin.

Hope she will id this next photo as well.  Who is he Amy?

And where are we for some delicious Tex-Mex lunch fare.

April 8

Boy do I love having a tour guide and driver.  I feel like a celebrity or at least a rich lady.    Amy took me to San Antonio the next day.   I had never seen the River Walk and was I impressed.  Why every city that has a river doesn’t make it such a wonderful place I don’t understand.

 

My tour guide par excellence.

Amy picked a restaurant for lunch that had tables right on the river.

Enough food for two people on each plate.

Here’s what happened at the tables the second the diners vacated if the wait staff didn’t fly in to clean up.

Such water front beauty with giant buildings in the background.   Beauty and the beast.

From there Amy indulged my touristy desire to say I’d been to the Alamo.

Long walls edged the compound.

As we walked along, we found an authentic Texas Cowboy.   What luck!

The Alamo, pride of Texas.  I’d always thought it was a fort or perhaps in high school history I knew the truth.

Not sure if this is Davey Crockett dwarfing Amy.

Once inside I recognized immediately that this had been a church not a fort which they were defending.

Out in the courtyard was a gorgeous tree all covered in lights.  Too bad I don’t hang out after dark.  I’ll bet this is stunning.

Limbs all the way to the ground.

Of the statues on the grounds, this was my favorite.  This is Emily West Morgan, “the Yellow Rose of Texas”. 

Here’s the sign that tells her story.   Myth?  Legend?  Truth?  
This is Texas after all.

April 9

For  Wednesday Roger had planned for the family to go out for dinner in Austin and afterward take a boat ride under the Congress Avenue Bridge to see the bats fly out at dusk

I had the earlier part of the day to myself so I spent some time along the San Marcos river at the park.   The sites are not river front which is actually very nice since it has been left natural with a narrow path along side.

There wasn’t really a way to put a canoe or kayak in the river without long portage but the water was too shallow anyway.

It’s just lovely and was the best part of the park.

Roger and his wife Carol have 3 daughters, Karissa, Amy and Abby.  All 3 live relatively close to their parents.  Unfortunately Abby and her husband Matt could not come to the dinner but  Amy and her wife Angela and Karissa and her SO Mike were there.   Karissa and Mike came quite a distance just to have dinner with us.  Thank you both.

Angela, Carol, Roger

                                  Karissa

After dinner it was off to the bat boat trip.

I learned that Austin hosts the largest urban bat colony in the world with an estimated 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats which raise an estimated 750,000 pups each year.  Their home is under the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge which spans Lady Bird Lake in the heart of downtown Austin    I was pleased to see both of these important women honored in this way.  I’d also bet Austin has no mosquitos.

There were 5 of us on the bat boat.  In front are Angela and Amy, behind them Carol and Roger.

Austin  Skyline as we head for the bridge.

You can see the sun going down under the bridge.  I had to lighten the pictures a little to see the literally thousands of bats that came pouring into the sky.

Look at how many people are on the bridge in the picture below.  I wonder if they could hear the bats or feel them going by.    So fantastic.  Thank you Roger.

Austin skyline from the water after dark.

April 10

Roger had a plan for Thursday too.   I met them at their lovely home and he drove us to a Double Decker Bus Ride to see the sites of Austin.

This bench is in the front courtyard of the house.  Words for me to remember.

I wondered how many times these two kind people had taken others on this trip through the city of Austin.

It was great being on top of the bus so I could see the lovely architecture of the older buildings.

The old and the new.   I know which I find more interesting.

The Texas State capitol building.

Probably not a single family home any more but lovely still.

Blocking out the sun as our guide tells us which building is which.  I feel like I’m in New York.

I’ve noticed several murals in my travels and always wondered who did them and how they chose to put what where.   I’m sure our guide, on the left told us but I can’t pull it out of my memory.

From there we began hunting for lunch.   We opted for pizza and parked next to Mr. Rogers.   You an see the umbrellas of Home Slice Pizza just beyond him.

On the way out, Willie was there.  I second the sentiment.  Boy would that be a change.

To round out the day we stopped at Rio Vista a popular park where Amy has paddled many times doing the Texas Water Safari billed as “the World’s Toughest Boat Race”.   The 260 mile race begins in San Marcos and goes to Seadrift on the Texas Coastline via the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers.  This is an athletic feat I can’t even imagine and she’s done it multiple times.   Way to go Amy!

This was my last day with Roger and Carol who had other guests arriving on Friday.  They are a popular host and hostess indeed.  And no wonder.  Many thanks to them, Amy, Angela and the rest of the family for coming out for dinners and lunches and taking me to see the sites in their part of Texas.

That was all the good, now for the bad.

I pulled out of Pecan Riverside RV Park in plenty of time for my drive to my next reservation in Fredericksburg Texas home of the famed spring Bluebonnet display which was not to be this year.   But I had reservations, so off I went.

Or off I tried to go.  I got about 5 miles from the park when BAM.  I heard a loud noise.  It wasn’t an accident so I thought it wasn’t me.  But at a red light, a woman pulled up along side and pointed to my roof and said something was wrong.   I was able to pull over into a nearly empty parking lot and got out to look.

Sure enough, she was right.  On the driver’s side front, the roof had become detached.

Now What? 

I researched local RV techs but it was Sunday of course.  Still two of them actually answered their phones.  One said he couldn’t help me and the other said he was across the state at his son’s baseball game but could come look at it tomorrow.  He knew where I was and advised that I not try to stay over night in that parking lot.

So I limped at about 20-25 mph with my flashers on (I know the folks behind me loved me) back to Pecan Riverside and managed to make it without the whole roof ripping open.

They too were closed on Sunday so I crossed my fingers and pulled back into my former site which luckily was empty.  I took this picture from the second story office porch.  There is poor Winnona in the distance.  Just beyond the locked gate to which I also luckily still had the code.

Here’s what it looked like when I got to the park.

I called the Fredericksburg Park and told them I wasn’t sure when I’d get there but it wouldn’t be today.

I put out an alarm on line and got folks saying just put it back in the channel and reseal it; others saying the whole roof would have to be replaced.  

I wonder why the multiple people I have had check the roof over the last two years, at least 4, did not spot that this sealant needed redoing.

Bright and early Josh from River Cities RV came out and tried to put the fiberglass back into the channel so he could seal it.  But it would not stay.

He recommended getting metal strips and screwing the roof down just above the channel putting butyl tape behind the strip to keep water out. 

Will that work or have I just been forced to doom Winnona to an early rotting death. 

He couldn’t get back the next day but came the following one and I watched as he drilled so many holes in my roof.  I had both sides done to prevent the same thing from happening there.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  

How will I know if it is leaking in the next big rain?  Where will I see the water?  Will it be behind the walls?

I’m pretty sick about this but really had no choice.  I could not drive as it was. And I could not just stay in Texas forever.

Please let me know what you think about this good or bad and what if any advice you have for me now.

The white paper is the backing of the butyl tape.   The dislodged section is now firmly in place.

Here’s a close up of what it looks like now.  This strip runs above the rail from from front to back on both sides.  I wonder why Winnebago didn’t do something like this in the first place if it is an OK fix.   I heard from a LOT of people that despite Winnebago’s great coaches this is one of two major design flaws with which many folks have had problems.

So there it is, the good and the bad of my stay in the Lone Star State.  Still, I was lucky to find someone who could come out pretty quickly and had a plan to fix it when the obvious one wouldn’t work.

I did get to Fredericksburg and on to Albuquerque for the Nation’s Largest Pow Wow.  Coming up next.

Remember to let me know your thoughts on this fix.