TrailerQuest 2010 - Days 8-9

Fiesta, the ice cream social and the worst meal of our adult lives

Greetings once again from Skyline RV Park in Bandera, TX!  The Bluebonnet Casita Rally is wrapping up tomorrow and we will be heading to Austin for a night.

We woke up Friday and after attending the morning coffee pot and sweet roll meeting decided to spend the afternoon in San Antonio.  A leisurely one hour drive put is in the heart of downtown as the city continued its annual Fiesta San Antonio celebration.  We expected traffic, swelling throngs of festival-goers and parking hassles and were not disappointed.  Taking a chance that we would get lucky we drove straight to an area one block away from the Alamo and a short walk from the famed Riverwalk with convenient access to the freeway.

Parking for the festival provided us with several ways to part with our hard earned cash.  Seizing upon a brief window of opportunity we parked at a large hotel which was offering parking in their lot for $20 instead of the going rate of $35.  Money well-spent!  

For those who have not been the San Antonio Riverwalk is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath downtown San Antonio, Texas. Lined by bars, shops and restaurants, the River Walk is an important part of the city's urban fabric and a tourist attraction in its own right.

The weather was warm and humid but nothing like the oppressive weather in the Texas summer months.  We ate lunch outside along the river, strolled into shops, taunted waterfowl (well, one of us did), and enjoyed the building energy of Fiesta.  Anya was a popular target for party-goers throwing beads and trinkets from the passing riverboats.

After we returned to street level, a brief walk took us to the Alamo - the former Roman Catholic mission and site of the battle of the Alamo in 1836.  Inside the thick stone walls made for a cool retreat and large arrangements of flowers all around provided a sweet and pleasant smell.  The grounds surrounding the Alamo were lush and serene and Anya took great joy in seeing the koi fish swimming in the moat and in chasing squirrels into trees and shrubs.

One thing I thought was odd - the name "The Alamo" is trademarked.  I don't know why that struck me as it did.  It was like reading something that says "The Pacific Ocean™" or "The sky™".

We weathered our first torrential weather event that night, with a tornado watch all night and a severe thunderstorm warning for several hours.  It was enough to make me rethink how much I had mentally ridiculed the crazy lady who cornered me in the rec room and told me how she always stays in site number 77 because right behind site number 77 there is a ditch that leads under the laundry room building and you can crawl into it in case of a tornado.  I kept thinking "Which direction did that batshit insane woman say I should crawl when I got to the laundry room ditch?".  It pounded, rained, blew, thundered and was generally nasty all night and our little trailer held up just fine.  Laura said "I'm so glad we aren't in our old pop-up right now".  I agreed, but mostly because that would mean we were in someone's driveway back in Utah.

Seaworld lost the contest for what to do on Saturday, with "nothing much" surging ahead at the last minute.  Breakfast was the morning coffee pot and pancake breakfast followed by a 2 hour session on modifying your camper.  The discussion on riveting was, well…..riveting.  (So stupid but how many times will I attend a discussion on riveting where I need to describe it later?).  We talked about plumbing, solar panels, lots of apparent confusion about receiving TV signals in the digital era and such.  Good info.

Lunch took us into the town of Bandera and that is where we fell into the culinary circle of hell in Dante's Inferno.  It was a beautiful post-storm afternoon and we wanted to sit outdoors along the main street in town and watch the silly mix of historical cowboy re-enactors, weekend Harley turds and locals.  That meant only one place - the "Texaritas" eatery and its inviting streetfront patio.  Sure it was gritty and rough.  Oh the signage promised steaks and ribs and burgers.  Yes there were a few people there.

Service was the first strike.  After we had been ignored for about 20 minutes, Laura stopped a random waiter and asked if we could get menus and something to drink.  He said "sure, we are just really busy right now".  Laura glanced around the patio of perhaps 20 other diners and replied "…..O…….K…….".   You now, in that Laura way.  I'll spare you the full details about service and food and just hit the noteworthy bits:

- our cutlery and iced tea refills were facilitated by someone's grandmother who was sitting at the table next to us.  She was just another customer.

- Laura's one and only small bite of her hamburger ended with the dialog "Does this meat smell funny to you?".  "Yep, it smells like sour milk".  "That's what it tasted like".

- It was the first time I have eaten potato salad that was clearly made with Sweet N Low

- if you have never eaten strips of fat, basted in BBQ flavored vaseline you should not start now

- we tipped the grandmother

I finally said to Laura "this $20 that we leave will give us the legal right to just run the hell out of this place.  It may well be the best $20 we spend on this trip".  Thankfully Anya napped the entire time at this gastronomical butthole of a restaurant.  We ended up eating lunch at a Greek place around the corner, run by a Chilean woman and her Greek husband.

Our day ended at the rally ice cream social and prize raffle.  Anya is sleeping in the camper now, Laura is reading inside and I'm sitting outside in the cold night air typing this while sitting next to our official cocktail station.  I'm happy for both Laura and I that the time window within which food poisoning commences has come and gone since lunch.

We're off to Austin tomorrow morning.  Maybe the urban bats will be out.