Good Bye Austin, Hello San Antonio Texas

October 24 - 25, 2013   

We can feel the difference in the weather now that we are further south in San Antonio.  It is much more like Florida now with highs in the 80’s and lows in the upper 60’s.  We also have humidity in the 70-80% range making it very sticky.  We are also seeing a lot of dust that is supposed to be consistent with south Texas.  We are thinking that we are just going to need to get used to everything being dusty all of the time now.

Thursday the 24th we hit a local Wally World in Austin for some food staples.  But before we got to Wally World, we stopped at a local Mexican meat market about a mile up the road from our site.  We like getting our meat at a market whenever we can versus getting it at a grocery store.  Usually the meat costs a little more but the quality is much better and without as many chemicals.  The special thing we bought was some marinated Fajita skirt steak.  We got 1.5 pounds, enough for 2 meals.

After Wally World, we left the site at 6 pm and head into downtown Austin. Our goals were to see the bats, check out the night life, and have dinner somewhere.  

First on the goals list was seeing the bats. Somewhere around 1.5 million bats live under the Congress Avenue Bridge and come out in a swarm at dusk to eat.  This is on the top 10 thinks to do in Austin by the way.  When they come out they are silent but the air becomes dark with black bats.  It really is a strange sight to see.  This is another event that one must see in person to really get a good perspective of this.  Pictures just do not capture this very well.

Patty's new friend on Congress Avenue Bridge with the "Bat Man".  That is a bat on his head!

More bat spectators.

People waiting for the bats on Lady Bird Lake.

View of the people on the bridge and of downtown Austin.

Look close you can see the bats next to the bridge.

The bat swarms are in the background of this picture over the water. All those boats are spectators.

 After the bat fun, we were off to check out the night life in Austin.  Most of the night life seems to be around 6th Street which is only a half mile from the bat bridge.  6th Street in Austin is like many old downtowns now.  They are reinventing themselves as cool places to be.  Both sides of the street are lined with open front bars, bistros, and restaurants mostly all with live music.  The street is full of people having fun with the sounds of music everywhere.  It reminded us of a slightly upscale New Orleans just not as big.

The Ritz hotel and restaurant on 6th street.  A little too pricey for us.

This place is decked out for Halloween complete with a guy hanging from the top center window.

Roof top dining.

Many restaurants were either roof top seating or just have an open front to the street.

Cool Mural on 6th Street in Austin

So after strolling most of 6th Street several times as we got sort of mixed up with directions a couple of times, we sat down for dinner.  We decided on The Old Pecan Street Café for dinner.  Basically Patty picked the place out and it was great.  The café wasn't open to the street so it was more of a romantic sort of setting which we enjoyed.  

Both of our orders were good, but mine was great!  I had the Steak Bordeaux which was so tender I don't think I even needed to have teeth to chew it. It came with a Bordeaux and mushroom reduction that was just as good as the steak.  I also could not eat the whole steak so it came back to the RV with us.  It was a great night out.  How can you not like a night out with bats, steak and the beautiful woman you married!

Patty at The Old Pecan Street Cafe.

Friday the 25th we headed out of Austin around noon for the 100 mile trip to San Antonio.  We decided to stop at a Camping World on I 35 about half way to get some stuff we seem to only be able to get there.  We got some stakes to hold the carpet mat down in the wind, a new flex water hose, and a spring loaded door latch.  We also got some new hooks for our rope lights.  This added about an hour to the trip down to San Antonio.

We arrived at the Hidden Valley RV Park in the San Antonio south suburb town of Von Ormy Texas.  Hidden Valley is one of the most secluded parks we have been in.  It is at the end of a 3/4 mile long dusty gravel road.  The road sort of narrows and the sign for the park is over the entire gravel road.  The owners live in a nice house across from the welcome booth. 

This is the entrance to the park.

A doe running from us as we head to our site.

Our site is one of about 30 sites in a valley about a quarter of a mile farther down that dusty road from the entrance sign. We picked a pull through in the back with no trees so we could get satellite TV.  It looks like we have 6 neighbors spread out over the area.  Except for the dust, this will be fine for what we want to do here in the area.

Our dusty site.

Tomorrow, Saturday we are planning to do laundry and just lay low for the day.  In fact we will most probably chill out both Saturday and Sunday because it is supposed to rain and we don't like going out as much on the weekends since that is when most local working people get out.  We need to get a propane tank filled, I need a haircut, and we need to do laundry.  Oh, and we will probably have Fajitas one night using our new Mexican meat we got in Austin.

Stay Tuned!