When we booked our stay at Seminole Canyon State Park, our plan had been to take the guided tour to see the rock art on Monday or Tuesday, and leave the park on Wednesday.  However, the only way to see the rock art is to go on a guided tour, and the tour doesn’t run on Mondays and Tuesdays.  So, we extended our stay by a day and signed up for the tour on Wednesday morning.  At the ranger’s recommendation, we booked on line, and it was a good thing we did since the tour was full.  ​

The tour meets in the Visitors’ Center, and the tour guide leads the group into the canyon to see the rock art in the Fate Bell Shelter.  Fate Bell was the rancher who owned the land before it was turned into a state park.  On the way down into the canyon, Jerri, our tour guide, explained the history of the canyon, both ancient and modern as far as humans go, as well as the natural history of the geology, the flora, and the fauna.  Even with this background buzzing in our brains, it was still a thrill to look up and see the first evidenced of the cave paintings. 

The cave paintings are in a couple of connected rock shelters, and after looking at the first set we proceeded down the canyon to see the rest.  We were fortunate that the tour group was a very good group, with everyone attentive, engaged, and polite.  Everyone took turns getting close to the art and taking photographs, and respected Jerri’s instructions.  One of the things I found interesting which was outside the history was that my iPhone camera was better at seeing the art than my eyes, and when I had difficulty deciphering a drawing, I could take a photo and see it much more clearly. ​

​At the end of the tour, Jerri turned us loose to make our way out of the canyon, which allowed us to get a second look at things we wanted to see again.  For us, this was things that she’d pointed out in passing such as the many fossils in the rocks in the canyon.

On Saturday, we took out the e-bikes and biked a trail that runs through the city to the Rio Grande.  Getting there was a little tense since the park is wedged between two very busy state highways, each with two lanes running in both directions.  However, both highways have sidewalks on both sides of the road, so we rode the bikes along the sidewalk and it wasn’t too bad.  We know bikes are supposed to follow traffic laws, but we didn’t see any pedestrians on the sidewalks, and we did see a lot of bicycle tire tracks in the sandy spots along the way.  We found a way to get to the trailhead through neighborhoods to minimize the time on the highway, which caused a brief burp when we arrived at a gate where we had apparently pedaled into a gated community through an open back gate.  The gate didn’t seem to have any sensors to open for a couple of wayward cycles, but some resident took pity on us an opened it remotely.​

From there we quickly found the trailhead and headed towards the river.  On a beautiful sunny Saturday, we only saw one other bicycle, and a few walkers, which surprised us since the trail runs through a few city parks where we did see people enjoying the day, although they must have driven there rather than walked or bicycled.  The trail is fun to ride, very twisty and windy, and it crosses bridges and runs under overpasses so we didn’t have to stop at all.  All of the sudden we saw a big waterway in front of us and realized we’d arrived at the Rio Grande at the end of the trail.  We pulled up and looked at Mexico and took some photos.  We didn’t see a wall, we didn’t see hordes of migrants swimming across the river, and the only reason we even knew we were at the border was because there were a couple of floodlights and one truck with a few soldiers in the park at the end of the trail on the US side.  We discussed packing up and heading back into Mexico for a month or so, but decided that with the expense of getting the truck insured, and getting an international vet certificate for the animals, we were probably better off continuing our trip in the US.  We retraced our path back to the campground, and packed up so we’d be ready to head to Seminole Canyon State Park in the morning.

Sunday morning, we packed up and headed north, following the river.  We’d already made reservations at a primitive campsite at Seminole Canyon, so we made sure to fill our water tank and empty our gray tank.  Ever since the ice storm, we’d been staying at campsites so we could plug in and use the heater, and that also meant that we could charge our batteries, so we were heading out with 100% charge on our batteries as well.  All good, right?

Somewhere along the drive, I took a look at our battery status and realized that we weren’t getting any charge from the solar panels.  We didn’t worry too much because previously we’ve had to turn things off and on and switch some switches to get things running correctly after we’ve been plugged in to shore power.  When we stopped to get lunch and do some shopping, Tom switched the switches and figured that when we were ready to leave and he turned things on again, everything would be working as usual.  But, nothing had changed.  We continued on our way to the park and planned an overnight hard shutdown to kickstart things.​

We arrived at Seminole Canyon State Park around 4pm.  This park is truly in the middle of nowhere, and as we had driven out of the last town on the road before the park, we had noticed a sign warning that there were no services on the route for 88 miles.  So far in our travels, I don’t think we’ve gone 20 miles without seeing road services, so it was a little bit of a surprise.

The Visitor Center for the park is about a half mile off the state road, and is set on a bluff overlooking the canyon.  We checked in, and headed for our campsite, which is another mile down the park road.  The sun isn’t setting until almost 6:30 here now, so we had time to take a 3.5 mile walk the ranger had recommended before dark.  At first we just commented on the beauty of the desert, until we walked around a corner and saw the canyon in front of us.  It was…I’m not really sure how to describe it from my north east perspective.  Breathtaking?  Stunning?  Gorgeous?  Fill in the superlative of your choice.  I know this isn’t even a big canyon like the Grand Canyon, but for someone who’s never been near this type of geology before, it’s big enough.  We finished our walk, moving pretty slowly as we stopped to take a lot of photos. ​

​We got back to the campsite shortly before sunset, and were treated to the most amazing sunset.  The horizon goes on forever here, and the setting sun takes up the whole sky.  We’re parked so our door faces basically west, so that’s where the sun was actually setting, but I could look out my kitchen window on the opposite side of the camper, and the colors were just as impressive.  Then, the full moon rose, and I mumbled about how I was going to take a photo even though moon photos never look like what you’re seeing.  While the photo doesn’t fully capture the beauty, it’s a lot closer than most moon photos, and the photo is completely unaltered.

Sunday night we shut down our electrical system.  It was cool enough that we weren’t worried about the food in the refrigerator, and we hoped that would do the trick.  But, on Monday morning when we turned it back on, nothing had changed.  I headed out to do some chores and left Tom and his tools working in the electrical box.  I returned an hour or so later and asked if he’d been able to fix it.  He’d looked at a couple of circuit breakers and wiggled some wires, but hadn’t found any problems, so hadn’t really done anything, and he was starting to get worried.  I decided to look at the system status on my phone, just out of curiosity…and saw that the solar panels were charging like normal.  I showed him, thanked him, and left him looking puzzled that it was now working.  He still doesn’t know what he did to fix it, but we decided to take it. ​

Our original plan at this park had been to do some hiking and take the tour where they take you to see ancient cave paintings.  When we checked in Sunday afternoon, we found that the tours don’t run on Monday and Tuesday, so we decided to extend our stay by a night and book the cave painting tour for Wednesday morning.  This left Monday to hike the other park trails, where we were pleasantly surprised that dogs are welcome.  We followed the ranger’s advice and headed about 4 miles along the Canyon Rim trail to the end, where the canyon meets the Rio Grande, and where there is an overlook to see another ancient cave painting.

We knew from the day before that we would be hiking through desert, and the day had warmed up into the 70s, so we set off more water than we usually take.  We usually run lean on water and end up taking some home, so we thought our liter of water would be plenty.  We were a little surprised when the dogs were panting after only about 2.5 miles, so we stopped and had a drink and shared some water with them.  We continued along the canyon trail to the Panther Cave Overlook, which is a shallow cave on the other side of the canyon which contains a large painting, including a 9-foot panther.  The ranger had said that you could see the panther with bare eyes or even better with binoculars, but I hadn’t had much hope of seeing anything.  We don’t have binoculars with us, so we squinched up our eyes to see as best we could, but couldn’t really see much.  Then I had the brainstorm to take a blown up photo with my iPhone camera, and even though it’s not perfect, I got a pretty clear photo of the panther. ​

​We continued along the trail, which runs out to the Rio Grande, and again looked at Mexico.  At this point on the river, Mexico has its own wall made by Mother Nature, and the photos don’t capture how BIG everything is.  Tom’s phone also made us realize how windy it was when the howling wind tripped his noise alarm.  Between the heat and the wind, we thought we should maybe drink a little, and when I pulled out the water bottle we realized that the panting dogs were also looking very hopeful.  We repeated our earlier exercise, with each of us taking a mouthful of water and then sharing the rest of the bottle between the dogs.  We weren’t in any danger of getting ill from dehydration, and were in fact more worried about the dogs, so it wasn’t a big deal, but we made a mental note that in our upcoming desert hikes we’d need to be a little more careful.

I may have mentioned in earlier blog posts that one of the surprises of this trip is the quality of the state parks we are finding.  And, while I probably wouldn’t call Texas my favorite state, their state parks are the crème de la crème of state parks from what we’ve seen so far.  All of the Texas state parks have something incredible to share, whether it’s a unique ecosystem, dinosaur tracks, ancient cave paintings, incredible geology, or something else.  They are also very conscious of taking care of their visitors, as we found when we rounded a corner on the trail and saw two big livestock troughs set up on the side.  We wondered what they were for, until I walked over to look and found that they were full of clear cool water.  We didn’t trust it to be potable, but we took the dogs over and let them drink as much as they wanted, commenting on how we maybe wouldn’t have shared all of our water with them had we known the livestock troughs were there.  We will probably be hiking out there again today and tomorrow, and we will work the troughs into our route so we can water the dogs without depleting our own supply.​

We returned to the campsite in time for another beautiful sunset.  Our Lake Casa Blanca campground neighbors had pulled in near us, so we had a visit with them, as well as with a German gentleman driving a big Unimog overlander vehicle.  We’ll be taking another hike today, and are doing the cave painting tour tomorrow to see the other cave paintings. I’m sure I’ll be posting more photos soon.

Thursday morning, although it was still drizzling, temperatures were in the mid-30s so we decided the risk of icy roads was minimal.  We pulled out of the Gone Fishin’ RV Park around 8:30 and headed for San Antonio.  Roads were wet but safe all the way into San Antonio, where our first stop was Mission San Jose, which is also the site of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park Visitors’ Center.  We already visited the San Antonio Missions in 2016 when we were driving home to Belize, and had ended up spending three days in San Antonio because we were having so much fun visiting all the missions and walking on the Riverwalk.  So, we didn’t feel like we needed to do the whole Missions trail, but wanted to check out the Visitors’ Center and take the dogs for a walk on the Riverwalk at the southern end of the trail.

After our chilly walk on the Riverwalk, we went to a nearby Walmart to stock up for the three nights we’d booked at the Lake Casa Blanca International State Park in Laredo.  Shopping was successful, except for the fact that shelves of the staples had been picked bare by people preparing for the storm, and the egg shelf was completely empty.  We had flashbacks to store shelves in Upstate New York when a snow storm was predicted.  But, we figured we could get eggs along the way (which we did), so we got on I-35 to get to Laredo as quickly as possible.  

Driving on the interstates isn’t ideal for us since the big trucks and busses push us around, but it’s faster than the blue highways, and we wanted to get to the state park before it closed.  The worst hazard was one semi that had sheets of ice sliding off the back and smashing in the road, but Tom pushed the speed limit and we passed without any incidents.  We found the park and pulled in around 4:30, just as the sun appeared.  We set up camp in record time so that we could hang all of our wet stuff out to dry.

We’re booked here until Sunday morning, when we plan to head to the Seminole Canyon State Park & Historic Site, which is on our way to Big Bend National Park.  Lake Casa Blanca SP has a beautiful lake and some hiking trails, and we plan to go into Laredo and look across the river at Mexico.  With the nasty weather, we’ve considered just crossing the bridge into Mexico for a month or so until it warms up, but the complications of three vehicles and four animals are making us think it’s not worth the time and expense and we will continue on our loosely planned path.

When we left the Space Center, we stopped for the night not too far west of Houston.  We’d been in touch with our Belize neighbors Todd and Tatiana, who were leaving Albuquerque in their camper van and heading east on I-10 on their way to Florida.  We decided that we would meet up near San Antonio, probably on Sunday, so when we got on the road in the morning we headed towards Palmetto State Park, which is just east of San Antonio, and wait for them there.

I had called Palmetto State Park in the morning and booked a campsite, so the rangers at the park office were waiting for us when we got there.  When I called, they had asked for our license plate number, so they knew we were driving a Belize vehicle.  The ranger checking us in told us that his fellow ranger Jeremy had visited Belize and had shown him photos, and wanted to know where we lived and what we did.  We started telling him about Moonracer when Jeremy came out from the back and joined in the conversation.  Jeremy told us that he’d spent a school project term in Belize with one of the archeology groups.  We asked him who his professor was, and he said Dr. Brett Houck, and we told him that Dr. Houck had brought student groups to stay with us.  Jeremy started to laugh and asked if we remembered the group when there was a torrential rainstorm, and everybody sleeping in tents ended up sleeping on tables in the dining palapa.  We did, of course, and Jeremy got his phone out and showed us a photo of *his* bed that night, which was on our picnic table in our dining palapa.  

After talking to the rangers about Belize and the smallness of the world, we drove to our campsite.  The Palmetto State Park campground is very small, but is surrounded by trails that wind through the woods.  The rain was almost stopped by the time we were parked and settled, so we took the dogs for a nice walk on the trails.

In the morning, Tom got in touch with Todd and Tatiana, and decided that we would meet near where we already were, east of San Antonio.  We couldn’t get reservations for both of us at Palmetto State Park, so we found another campground outside of Gonzales, TX, that had room for both of us for a couple of nights, and had full hookups since neither of us was getting enough sun to keep our batteries charged.  Plus, cold weather was predicted, so we wanted to be able to plug in our electric heater, which puts a strain on our system even when the sun shines.  We left Palmetto State Park and headed into Gonzales, where we went shopping and had lunch at Pizza Hut, which Tom has been wanting to do ever since we drove into the US.  The pizza was as good and greasy as we remembered, and miraculously didn’t upset either of our stomachs.  Pizza Hut pizza definitely isn’t the best pizza, but it’s one of those nostalgic things that we’d been meaning to do for a while.

After lunch, we headed for the Gone Fishin’ RV Park, where we did what we always do - got settled and took the dogs for a walk.  The park is filled mostly with long term renters, but everybody from Mark, the owner, to the camp hosts, to the other campers was super friendly and welcoming.  The park is sort of a sad story, because it was created as a fishing camp, but in August 2021 the dam downstream broke, and now the river is dry.  The boat launch, the docs, and all the formerly riverside homes now line a dry gully.  Residents are trying to get the government to fix the dam, but apparently that project isn’t high on Texas’s list of priorities.

Todd and Tatiana pulled in shortly after dark, and we had a grand reunion as we crammed into our camper for dinner.  We hadn’t seen Todd since May of last year when he left for their Albuquerque home shortly before we left Belize, and we hadn’t seen Tatiana for close to a year before that.  We all stayed up way past our bedtime, especially because Tatiana was scheduled to work online in the morning.  

Our original plan had been to visit with Todd the next day, Monday, and have another dinner before we all departed Tuesday morning.  While Tatiana worked, we got out for another walk in a nearby neighborhood, and tried to walk to the broken dam.  We found that the dam is gated and deemed a hazardous area, but it gave us a good excuse to get us and the dogs out to get some exercise.  Overnight, the weather had turned cold, so we were bundled up and Kismet got to wear her jacket gifted to her by our friend Amanda for the first time on this trip.  We’ve tried hard to stay ahead of the cold, and have mostly done it, until now.  While we’ve seen temperatures around freezing at night and in the morning, this is the first time temperatures have stayed that cold all day.

Overnight on Monday, the weather took a major turn for the worse.  When we got up Tuesday morning, we heard the news reports of all the icing in Texas.  We were just about to head out and go to San Antonio before heading south to Laredo to try to get ahead of it, when Tom took our garbage to the dumpster and talked to Christine, the camp host.  She had just talked to one of her kids in San Antonio, and she told Tom that ice was starting there and driving was dangerous.  Tom and I talked about whether we should try anyway, or skip San Antonio and head directly to Laredo, or stay put for another day or two.  Caution won, and we decided to stay put until the storm passes.  Todd and Tatiana decided the same, so we all settled in for another night or two.  Last night we had dinner in their camper, and as of right now Tom and I have decided to stay until tomorrow, and Todd and Tatiana are watching the weather to see if they’ll have a chance to safely head east before the end of the day.  At the moment it’s sleeting, so we may be planning another neighborhood dinner - which is a good thing!