Potter’s Creek, Canyon Lake, TX and San Antonio April 15 – 29, 2013

Yummy restaurant in Giddings

We left Rocky Creek early enough to get to Giddings in time to have breakfast burritos in Giddings at a local Tex-Mex place Trish told us about – Taqueria Chihuahua.  She told us we couldn’t miss it – between being painted a bright goldenrod yellow and the busy parking lot – and she was right - with good reason, as it turned out.  Rich brought out cheese, egg, and chorizo burritos and extra green sauce and we ate in the parking lot, enjoying the bright flavors of good chorizo and green sauce.  I’m such a fan of good Tex-Mex – something we didn’t have in Florida!

Our Home

Potter’s Creek is another Army Corps of Engineers park and we once again lucked into a nice site for most of our stay. In fact, we enjoyed the location so much we extended our stay a week.  We saw a jackrabbit (my first), lots of deer, and some interesting scenery – a crazy combination of huge houses, restaurants in double wide trailers, lots of cactus, mesquite, juniper, and a marl-like soil.

The Alamo

We visited the Alamo, which was an experience - everyone was strangely subdued in going through the buildings and grounds, which were beautiful yet heartbreaking. It is definitely a location you don’t want to miss.

After the Alamo, we wandered down the River Walk, which is a beautifully landscaped walk along the banks of the San Antonio River, one level below the town. Apparently, instead of paving over an eyesore, one far-sighted city official felt making it a lush, restful shopping and restaurant experience would be more productive. What a good choice! While our meal was far from the best we’ve had thus far, the peaceful walk along the river more than made up for it.

Riverrwalk

After leaving the River Walk, we picked up some groceries and met our friend Ray, who was a post doc at UF while I was there. We arranged to have him out to the park on Saturday so we could catch up.  It was a great visit and we enjoyed seeing him again.

Monday we ended up in New Braunfels where I had to visit the urgent care center – my cold had come back with a vengeance and I was in full-blown asthma/bronchitis. I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly happy with the doctor I saw – he mainly lectured me about not taking antibiotics, then he gave me antibiotics. Rich began getting sick again as well, so we opted to stick at Potter’s Creek for the second week. 

We took a drive around the Devil’s Backbone, which is a drive around an area of canyons where legend has it Confederate soldiers and monks haunt the area. It a rugged terrain with flora that is different than any I’ve known.

Devil's Backbone

The Devil’s Backbone drive included the town of Blanco, which has a number of old, Western-style buildings, a café in the bowling alley that gets 4 ½ stars on TripAdvisor, and the court house is in a small old house.

Old building in Blanco

As with so many of our other campgrounds on this trip, since we were right on a lake, the sunsets were beautiful.

The last weekend we were there had a large group of folks come in just before the campground closed for the night (10 PM). They were noisy setting up, then got quiet, but shortly the noise level was excessive again. That kept up until nearly 4 AM.  Come to find out, one of the rangers had gone by around 10:30 and told them to quiet down and put out their fire (there is a burn ban on due to the drought and high fire risk). They had a ranger in their site on Saturday for some other problem, and Sunday when they left, they just piled up a lot of trash in two campsites, left bottles, cans, and food  and scattered around and took off.  I have to confess, when we found out that there would be steep Federal fines levied against them for the fire, two sites left a mess, and the cost of cleanup, I felt much better! The feds are dead serious about their regulations.  The total in fines and cleanup will be over 1k and there’s no way of getting out of paying. Their file will also be flagged for the next time they try to get in this park.  What goes around comes around.

Next up is Lakeview Park in Coleman, Texas.