On Our Way North.... again..

It didn't take us long to get everything done in the Valley that we headed down there to do.  One morning in Nuevo Progresso, Mexico, one morning sort of west of McAllen...  there's a Barnes and Noble there and Bill & I both needed our bookstore fix.  While we both use our Kindles for novels, Bill hits the genealogy section of the magazines and I browse the travel essays.  

We stopped at a Mexican restaurant for lunch... Poncho's....  authentic enough that I was saying "gracias" and "muy bien".....  and enough food that we had leftovers for dinner that evening.

Bill's fish tacos.  I had chile rellenos...  but they were filled with ground beef, not cheese, so weren't my favorite.  Sure didn't stop me from eating them, though.

We knew Camping World had closed, but haven't been real impressed with that store anyway, so headed to Donna, to the Ron Hoover RV store.  Finally replaced the slider to our screen door. 

 We also were able to buy a sheet of filter stuff to replace the stuff in our AC.  You can buy the whole system... for $8.99 each (we need 2), but being "do-it-yourself"ers, we just bought the sheet and cut it to size.

Finally up to the AT&T store.  Might as well have skipped this stop as they are still as user "unfriendly" as ever.  We pay (average) $80 a month for our phone usage.  That includes our "home" phone that we've had for at least 15 years.  It's a cell phone, but it's the only number we use.  We also have another phone... I call it my "Wal-Mart" phone because about the only time I use it is to find out where the heck Bill is in Wal-Mart.  I don't even know the phone number.  We lose lots of minutes every month because neither of us are phone users.  We talk to our kids and make whatever "business" calls we have to make.  But most of our communication is done on the internet these days...  banking, credit card stuff, etc.  And darn little of that.  We're out of the USA for a month or more every year and AT&T doesn't have a "vacation plan".  So...  we've been looking for a different plan... or it looks like, a different carrier.

So much for that....

A couple of stops at the H.E.B.  My favorite grocery store!  My introduction to the H.E.B. was when we were volunteering at Santa Ana NWR in 2002.  I love grocery shopping anyway, so that was a real treat.  And has been ever since!  I could do a whole blog about the ethnic foods etc...  maybe will at another time.

Okay...  we pay for our stay at Alamo Rose...  do some final trading of books at their library...  I head home.  Shortly after, Bill comes hobbling in...

Somehow he twisted his ankle leaving the building...  he's in pain.  Not only that, his ankle is starting to swell.  We sit around with a bottle of white wine deciding what to do as we'd planned on leaving in the morning.

Today...  morning.  Bill's ankle is about the size of the bottom of a bowling pin.  He can't put any weight on it.  Not good....  We have breakfast...  he says that if he can hook up we can leave.  I volunteer to hook up.  Ha!  I think that his ankle makes an instant, if not temporary, recovery.  I have never hooked up our rig.  In fact, I haven't driven our rig since that little incident in San Antonio in 2004.......  (don't ask...  panic attacks aren't discussed here).....  

We get hooked up.  We head out.... The rig has cruise control and it's a straight shot up Rt 281 and I37 to San Antonio and north.  I ask Bill if he can use the gas...  Yeah, sure.  A few minutes later, I ask him if he can depress the brake.  Hey... I like to cover all bases.  He says he's fine.  It's putting his 180 pounds of weight on it that hurts.

At 8am we're on the road.  It's easy peasy ....  we make 2 or 3 stops along the way...  yeah, one of them is for Border Patrol to see if we're toting any illegals with us....

Nope...  nor do we have any drugs....  let's keep movin' on...

We arrive at Brauning Lake RV park, about 10 miles out of San Antonio at 2pm.  It's a pull-through site.  Bill hooks us up... comes inside...  and all hell breaks loose outside ... thunder, lightning, and a hellish rainstorm.  We made it just in time.  Even our outdoor thermometer, which we forgot to bring inside, is still in place.  Pretty remarkable since it rode 225 miles on a little ledge next to the LP gauges.

We'll stay here tonight and head on north tomorrow.  What are our plans?  Well....  it's back to Celeste's up at Glen Rose for a week or so.  I have another doctor appt, Bill wants to work on Celeste's outdoor water system...  some stuff like that.  And then...  we'll head over to New Mexico to visit Bill's sister in Farmington.  We plan to stop at Sevilleta NWR to visit along the way.  No real plans...  just some things we haven't done for a while.

Guess we're just taking it easy for a while.  Seems kind of odd not to have a specific plan in mind...  but maybe it's time for a little R&R.

That's All For Today!