So it is almost 3 in the morning and Chris and I are driving down i-10 in Texas and he just called 911 because there is an EXTREMELY drunk person on the road. We are not trying to give anyone a DUI but we don’t even want to pass him at this point. He is swerving worse than anyone we have ever seen before. And now he just got off the exit. Sooo up until this second, our drive today has been pretty uneventful.
We stopped in Gonzales, LA to go to a Walmart and buy a new battery. Which always turns into spending over 200 dollars. There was a HUGE thunderstorm (although we didn’t get any hail like at my little sister Amelia’s high school graduation party today). The storm turned the gas pumps off right as we were in the middle of filling up. For some reason we haven’t had the best of luck with gas stations on this trip (faulty credit card machines and pumps that won’t continuously pump) and it always gets Chris really frustrated. He then decided to replace a belt so we stopped at Auto Zone and he did it right there in the parking lot.
We were finally on the road and I drove the first 4 hour stretch. Chris took some amazing photos out the window of the sunset over the swamp lands.
This just happened to include a LOT of bridges and construction, both of which scare me. But we survived and made to to Texas!! We are going to try and drive until we get too sleepy to drive anymore. It is really nice to drive this late because we can drive a lot safer with no traffic and trucks. So hopefully in the morning we will have made a lot of progress and knocked out of 15 hours of driving until we get to Carlsbad, NM. Goodnight!! (sorry that I couldn’t see everyone at Amelia’s party today, I miss you all and wish I could have been there…)
Around 4:15 Chris and I decided to stop in San Antonio because I have never been there and Chris said the Riverwalk there is very cool. We pull into the city and it is empty because it is so late. We find an outdoor parking lot and take a quick glance and see that parking for under an hour is $2.00. We thought that was a good deal so we pull into the empty lot and go for a walk. We walked Riverwalk for about 45 minutes and Chris told stories of when he was there with his family a couple years ago. It was really neat and I am really glad we stopped to see it.
So we get back to the RV and it is 5:15 in the morning. We start up the RV and take our ticket up to the gate, only to find out that the woman there wanted to charge us $20.00 for parking!!!!!! We thought that was insane because we were literally there for less than an hour. She points to the sign and says that any entrance to the lot after 5:00 pm is ten dollars per car. She then tells us that since we parked in more than one spot she had to charge us double (Chris had just pulled in right under a street lamp and didn’t bother to try and fit in one space because the huge lot was EMPTY). Chris and I were IRATE because first of all, we do have a budget and that is wayyy to much money to park for 45 min; we could park and plug in at an RV park for less than that. This woman was horrible and told us no check, no credit card, cash only. We didn’t even have 20 dollars cash on us other than in our emergency lock box stash and plus we were refusing to pay it. Chris asks to speak to her manager because we think we was just trying to charge us double so she could run our ticket and pocket the other 10 dollars. She said the manager won’t be available for another hour or so. Chris said “That’s fine we will wait right here. Hell I can even go back and take a nap until they get there.” He proceeds to put the RV in park, right at the exit gate, completely blocking it. This woman was the rudest person because at first we tried to be really nice and explain that we were trying to get to California and we just graduated college, but she didn’t care. Finally after about ten minutes, she realizes that we truly are not leaving. The window slides open and she said “fine, I feel sorry for you so I will let you out for just ten.” She did not feel sorry for us, we think she just realized that no matter what, we were not giving her twenty dollars. So we go in the back and dug up 8 dollar bills and 2 dollars in change to give her. Overall, it was a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE experience at South Bank Public Parking.
The only good thing that resulted in this encounter was that it fired us up and woke us up. We kept driving for a little while longer and then decided to pull over at a picnic area off the highway to sleep for a few hours. It was actually a pretty decent nights sleep considered we had just the fan running and no ac. Around 11 am, it started to get pretty hot so we woke up and walked outside the door to see cows and a donkey about 20 feet away. I thought that was a pretty cool thing to wake up to.
We get on the highway and then I realized that we are in Kerrville, TX were my Great Aunt Nancy lives. I immediately call my grandma and get her number to try and call her. We were so out of it last night that I didn’t even realize that we were that close. We pull off and walk around Lowes for about 45 and I kept calling without being able to get in touch with her. At this point we had to get back on the road because we were still over 7 hours from Carlsbad and had to get there before 8 i we wanted to stay in the RV park for the night. I was really disappointed I didn’t get to see her.
The terrain here is really interesting and the drive is pretty scenic, although it is also VERY LONG. We will be happy to get break when we get to Carlsbad.
