Star-Studded Birthday Bash

When I envisioned what I’d be doing on my 52nd birthday, strains of the ‘80’s punk rock band, The B52’s, played in my head—“Rock Lobster”, “Private Idaho”, and my favorite “Love Shack”.   Well, I did indeed queue up my B52’s playlist for my drive from Fort Stockton to meet up with Suzanne out in Fort Davis.  But she had come up with a much better idea for my birthday celebration—a trip up to the McDonald Observatory, a place renowned for the darkest skies in the U.S. (and thus, best star gazing and astronomic research).

The drive over to Fort Davis was a “picture postcard” West Texas day—big blue sky with polka dot white puffy clouds.

But soon, I began to see two small white dots on one of the hilltops….the observatory!

I originally thought I’d drive just the Tracker up the 8,000 foot mountain, but after calculating that I’d not be back down the mountain until midnight, thought I’d just better take Millie and the View up there with me to keep her dinner and potty schedule on track.

The View’s little turbo diesel did great at chugging us up the hill, and while there was no overnight parking allowed at the Observatory, they did have a few nice long RV and Bus parking spaces for day/evening parking.

Suzanne arrived about an hour later just in time for the “Twilight Program”, half inside auditorium presentation to review the solar system and constellations with us, and the second half in the circular outdoor theatre where the presenter asked 3 kids to volunteer to demonstrate the different orbits of the Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. 

I took my seat in the Pisces section with the other birthday boys and girls!

After the program, we had a couple hours to kill before the main event “Star Party” where we would finally be able to get inside these domes to peer through the really big telescopes!

It was fun to check our watches against the sun dial in front of the visitors center.  Yep, it had perfect time except for the daylight savings time adjustment!

 

And as Suzanne and I are prone to do whenever we get together, we had to do a goofy “Lucy & Ethel” kind of photo at some point too!

After a few gift shop purchases, we retreated to the View for some wine and cheese while Millie enjoyed her on-time dinner.  Meanwhile, the parking lot began to fill…and fill…and fill!  It was Spring Break week in Texas, and the Observatory was now running nightly Star Parties this week to keep up with the demand.  It turns out that 1,000 people made it up the mountain that night for my birthday Star Party.  Wow!

The Observatory had a completely different feel after dark and they had deployed a number of additional smaller telescopes to try and keep the lines of folks waiting at each dome to a minimum.  It all worked out pretty well.  Our only drawback was that the moon was up and nearing Full (so the lesser stars were not as visible).  But we still got to see quite a bit—Jupiter with its moons, our moon’s craters, the Orion nebulae, the Seven Sisters, and more.  It was like spending the evening being transported to a completely new world!

Of course, Suzanne and I had to take pictures of each other at the telescope!  I suggested we hold our cameras up to our chest so that their LCD screens would not disrupt our “night vision”.  It worked pretty well!

What an incredible party and one I will remember for quite some time…thanks Suzanne!

Afterwards, we made our way slowly down the mountain—Suzanne headed back to her campsite at Balmorhea State Park, and me headed to a boondocking site about 15 miles south.  I was about to break almost every single rule I normally follow to boondock safely as a solo woman.   The picnic area where I’d be staying was remote, it was out of cell phone signal range, and I was the only one parking there for the night.  Yikes!  But, on the other hand, I arrived at midnight and planned to leave early the next morning, and I had already scoped it out earlier in the day to know what it looked like.

Aside from a brief scare at 4am when a car pulled into the lot, idled behind me for a minute, and then drove off, all was fine and I lived a new day (albeit, now a year older!).  It was hard to photograph just how dark the skies were (and full of stars) at this boondocking spot, but it was certainly memorable!

 

 

Re-acclimating to the USA

The purr of diesel engines all around me, I awoke to my first morning back in the USA at the Texas Welcome Center parking lot north of Laredo, Texas.  When I squeezed out of my rig to take Millie out, I realized one of these diesel engine rigs is not like the others!

I stopped inside the Welcome Center to get properly “welcomed” back to the USA from a cheerful lady inside.  She filled up a complimentary “Don’t Mess With Texas” litter bag with a half-dozen pounds of brochures to tempt my next three weeks’ exploration of the state.

As I drove up I-35 towards San Antonio, there was no doubt I was now in Texas and back in the US.  Pickup trucks in Mexico usually drove slower because they were so comically overloaded with all sorts of household goods or farm supplies.  Whereas now back in the US, pickups sported big Texas-sized tires, and were rarely loaded with anything except fast-driving cowboys!

Chicago was still in a deep-freeze, so when I heard my buddy Suzanne (TakeToTheHighway.com) would be spending a few weeks exploring West Texas, a plan was soon hatched for us to caravan and explore the area together.  But before heading out to the barren West, I needed to restock my pantry of US goods, so we decided to both meet up in San Antonio first for a few days.

Since Suzanne had to work, and I had lots of errand-running to do, we didn’t feel the need to pay for $50 a night campsites at the KOA or resort-type parks in the area, so when Suzanne found a campground online that was close to downtown for less than $30/night, it sounded like the perfect place.

I arrived to Dixie Kampground first and picked out our pair of sites in the quiet back of the “pecan grove”, right next to a long-term camper with a curious sign posted in front of his site to “Beware of the Aspharagos.” Never did find out what that meant, nor did we want to strike up a conversation with the guy to find out!

On the other side of our Aspharagos neighbor was a junkyard of old half-standing trailers, rusting appliances, and old tires.  The view out the front of our Views was of this lovely “vintage” mobile home, complete with an outside bathtub and refrigerator!

Beyond the lack of visual appeal though, the Dixie had a certain quirky charm to it.  Most campers were long-term residents with rigs as quirky as the occupants themselves including this old bread truck-turned-RV.

Yes, the song Dixie refrained in our heads often while strolling this park…. “look away, look away, look away Dixieland!” but we actually both did come to like the friendly quirkiness of this place, and still preferred its character over any fancy RV resort filled with homogenous 6-figure RVs!

Most of my days were filled doing mundane chores—grocery shopping at H-E-B and Trader Joe’s, dog food shopping at Petsmart, getting my hair cut, and getting my Sodastream carbonators and syrups restocked at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

But one night, Suzanne and I happened to make it to the San Antonio Missions National Historic Site before sunset.  The missions themselves were already closed for the night, but I was able to get a few pretty exterior shots of Mission San José before a bride and her wedding photographer arrived!

Suzanne got a few more shots of the Missions than I did, but my last shot of the Mission Espada caught the final rays of sunlight in it’s bell tower:

I had one day of RV repair panic while in San Antonio.  The light in my fridge had been erratic ever since I bought the rig last Fall.  Sometimes it would come on when I opened the door, but sometimes it would not.  So, I finally decided to troubleshoot it while in San Antonio.  I discovered that the lamp bracket holding the light bulb had rusted and one of it’s prongs fell off into my hand as I removed the bulb.  I was able to easily unscrew the bracket and disconnect it’s power plug and figured I’d just look for a new bracket once I got home.  But the next morning, I discovered my fridge was now no longer running…ut oh! 

Fortunately, Suzanne had a spare ice cooler to loan me so all my new grocery purchases would not go bad.  I then set out to find my repair parts more urgently.  Thank goodness this happened in San Antonio, one of the very best places in the US for RV parts and service!  I was able to locate the needed parts just 30 minutes away in New Braunfels and by the afternoon was installing the shiny new parts into my fridge.

But, once installed, the fridge still would not work.  WTH???!!!! I checked the fuse panel in the converter, and found a burned out 5-amp fuse.  But, even after replacing it, the fridge would still not work.  By now, it’s almost 4pm on a Friday afternoon and panic is setting in.  I need a skilled repairman, and I need one fast!

A Google search revealed a mobile RV repair shop less than a mile away, so I called and left a message for San Antonio RV not holding much hope that they’d call me back before Monday. But within a few minutes, a cheerful tech named Alan called and said he’d be over within 30 minutes to take a look.

Sure enough, Alan’ bright orange truck rolled in a few minutes later and he started looking at the electrical connections inside the exterior rear access panel.  Within a couple minutes, Alan found the problem— the Norcold N611 fridges on these View-Navions has a second 5-amp fuse located inside an electrical box on the rear of the fridge.  It had blown out the same time my converter’s fridge fuse had blown (apparently, you’re supposed to turn the fridge off and disconnect power before unplugging the lamp bracket or thermistor power sockets).   Lesson learned!  Alan only charged me $42 for the service call which seemed like a complete bargain  for the grocery-saving rapid onsite repair!

With that problem solved, I was now more than ready for some Friday night celebration!  Suzanne yanked off her corporate ball and chain, and we headed down to the Riverwalk for some drinks and fine dining. There was a Wine Bar with some good Yelp reviews that caught our attention, but when we arrived to the parking lot, we decided to stroll the Riverwalk first and discovered a short wait at the colorful Casa Rio Mexican restaurant, so decided to eat there instead.

We got a table right on the river, and soon began drinking our margaritas and sangrias and watching the tour boats glide by.  What a quintessential San Antonio experience!

After dinner, we strolled the river’s edge around a big loop of restaurants and tourists attractions watching more boats go by.  What a lovely way to end the week and be welcomed back to the USA!

Saturday turned rainy and colder.  I had more errands to finish up as Suzanne headed out on a soggy bike ride.  We decided to laze around our RVs in the afternoon before heading out to dinner. As we made our way back downtown around 6:00pm and saw a road sign, we both simultaneously exclaimed “we forgot the Alamo!”  We had planned to do a full sightseeing day of the Alamo and downtown on Saturday, but after the fridge repair diversion and crappy weather setting in, our Saturday had gotten completely discombobulated.

Well, if it was now too late to actually go inside the Alamo, the least we could do would be to do a quick drive-by shooting of it!  We quickly exited the expressway and made our way to the site, first passing this curious horse-drawn carriage at a filling station—do they pump out horse chow here perhaps?

A few minutes later we were finally at the Alamo, an hour late and a dollar short, but at least we can now say we saw the outside of the building!

We headed up to the newer part of the Riverwalk around the old Pearl Brewery and a collection of upscale restaurants surrounding the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). 

The vegetarian restaurant was curiously closed on a Saturday night, and many of the other restaurants looked rather empty and overpriced.  As it began to rain, we finally stumbled into the trendy, packed, and highly-praised Cured restaurant.  A large meat locker is on prominent display at the front of the restaurant—sort of like a little shop of vegan horrors with body parts hanging by their hooves and what not.  But the very friendly maitre d' assured us that the chef also served a vegan plate of fresh organic vegetables and rice, so we got the last 2 seats at the bar for our meal.  It actually turned out to be a terrific place, but I don’t think I’ll get that image of the meat locker out of my mind any time soon!

Since Suzanne had to work again on Monday morning, we only had Sunday left to make our long drive out to West Texas.  But the Winnies did just great caravanning out I-10 together.  The drive was much more hilly and scenic than the flat plains I had anticipated.

But as we neared Fort Stockton, the hills leveled out and oil derricks began to appear.

It was Spring Break week in Texas where all school-aged children were now apparently being driven out to West Texas for their vacation by their RV-driving parents.  The state park didn’t have a vacancy for me until Tuesday, so I’d need to spend the next 2 nights boondocking solo while Suzanne drove on to Balmorhea.   Millie and I arrived to “Camp Wally” in Fort Stockton and were able to nab one of the last prime spots in the lot filled with RVs and Trucks.  Let the West Texas adventures begin!