For Photos: http://willemcoetzee.blogspot.com/2014/03/fotos-17.html
Allowing for rest stop and refueling the trip from Houston
to New Braunfels (Potters Creek http://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/canyon/Recreation/Camping/Devareas.asp
) was expected to take at least 5 hours, so we took Interstate 10 for the
better part of the distance. Potters Creek is on the northwest shore of Canyon
Lake, some 25 miles from New Braunfels. This general area is one of Willem and
Susan’s candidate places for resettlement, which was a major factor for having
reserved 8 days at the Lake.
We left Interstate 10 for San Marcos about 35
miles east of San Marcos and figured to go around New Braunfels straight to
Potters Creek. This would afford sightseeing of a part of the Hill Country,
obviating the need for making a special trip to do so later on. The idea wasn’t
bad except for the difficulty of finding places to pause along the way with the
trailer en tow. By then the GPS was really frustrated with us and wanted to
force us back to the highway. We refused and after passing through charming
Wimberley, we called upon GPS again and decided to listen this time. It seemed
the lady finally came around to seeing things our way and directed us onto a
very scenic country road.
By the time we were on John Knox Road, we began to
question the wisdom of it all – especially when spotting a sign for a narrow,
one lane crossing of a creek. Rounding the bend, there was a sharp decline
leading to the crossing, which wasn’t only narrow, but also
curving, with water briskly flowing over it and no side rails! We clearly didn’t belong there, but there was
no turning back and with input from all angles and mouths, Willem ventured
downward with his door ajar so as to be able to lean outward, keeping the left
front wheel of the truck as close as possible to the edge of the concrete and
hoping the trailer’s way back right wheels would follow around the bend and not
drop two feet off the narrow concrete. We made it around, with barely an inch
or two to spare. The way up the other end was mercifully easier. There and then we decided to follow suit on
the reformation precedent and mend our travel ways. The next morning at 3 a.m.
Willem awoke with a jolt, having relived the experience! Needless to say, our
expected time of arrival stood corrected and had the Park not been such a
beauty our attention would not have had been occupied by much better things.
Our camp site was absolutely beautiful and well-suited for
staying more than a week. Having established
contact with a realtor before and receiving listings over the past 3
years, Willem scheduled a meeting with her for Monday morning, while we all set
out on Saturday to drive by recent listings she had provided. Things in Texas
generally come big and so were the properties we saw – mostly building
sites. By Monday Willem and Susan would
be reasonably well prepared for their meeting. We also made a quick scan of New
Braunfels on Saturday, picking up useful info from the Visitor Center and doing
a little shopping.
Sunday called for more exploration and church in the
morning. Even before the service, we were invited to stay for lunch, which we
accepted. Remarkably, they have such handy every Sunday in the event of
visitors showing up; and there we were, the only ones that day and were joined
by a number of families that stayed to interact with us over a terrific hot meal
of jambalaya with or without shrimp and delicious desert! One of the families that joined us seemed
carefully appointed – recent Dutch immigrants, Rudolf and Anneke Pomme and
their three boys, to resonate with our (3 and ½ centuries) distant ancestry.
Fortunately Willem and Susan had spent time in the Netherlands on various
occasions and could indeed resonate – even language-wise. Overall, what an
unusually exemplary gesture on the part of the congregation!
The meeting on Monday was successful in conveying where
Willem and Susan stood with their searching relocation candidate places, and
redirecting neighborhoods of interest to them for receiving listings on in the
future. They could also articulate their
building preference if a suitable existing house cannot be found. Tuesday
started out relatively cold and rainy, which kept us mostly indoors and hoping
it would improve towards the evening for bar-b-queing a sizable purchase of
meat to last us for a while. The turn for the better did happen!
Willem was up and out real early Wednesday morning to get
the truck to New Braunfels for a scheduled service appointment, which would
take until the early afternoon. He was provided a car for the day and headed
back to camp for breakfast. The decision was for trying to first find our way
back to Wimberley ( http://www.wimberley.org/
) and San Marcos along the scary route of a number of days before, which this time resulted in a photography feast for Fickie. By the time we were through San
Marcos (http://www.ci.san-marcos.tx.us/ ),
not enough time remained to do a drive-by of the State Capitol, Austin, so we
caught lunch and returned to New Braunfels. Back on our own set of wheels,
returning to camp and planning for our daytrip to San Antonio on Thursday, were
relaxing.
San Antonio is a pretty unique city, historical and
contemporary ( http://visitsanantonio.com/
). It was March 6, when we parked not far from the Alamo for the day and by the
time we got to the latter many tourists and school kids were present. We missed
the official event which brought them there – commemoration of the Fall of the
Alamo on March 6, 1836. Flags, a podium and chairs for dignitaries were in evidence
of quite something that had taken place earlier. But what intrigued us were
dozens of children reaching to trace the names of the heroes of the Alamo,
etched in stone. Willem came to the
assistance of one of them, a sixth grader, perhaps, and she told him that a
name had been assigned to each student to research and on this occasion,
tracing it onto paper as a part of the report each one was writing. We were
greatly impressed by the way Texans keep their history alive through the
younger generation and thought it could serve as a model for the rest of the
country! No wonder Texans appear like a breed on their own with a heavy
skepticism of Washington. Liberalia elsewhere have little use for history,
constitution and other outdated relics of the past, such as adults and children
alike displaying manners and courtesy, as these folks do. Going overboard with
First Amendment rights and political correctness seems a poor substitute. But
in fairness, the South in general seems slow in buying into it and people are
friendly, outward going and accommodating
.
We enjoyed the River Walk and even took a boat tour to be
better informed about this unique feature of the city (http://www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/
). Afterwards we were really hungry and
picked one of the very many riverside restaurants; it turned out to be the same
one Willem and Susan dined at 3 years ago. We lingered around, expecting street
musicians to show up for serenading diners along the Riverwalk at dusk. But
when it didn’t start happening, an inquiry resulted in the answer that it no
longer occurs because of a city ordinance. Right or wrong, we were tired and
decided to return to camp 50 plus miles away.
The team appeared a little worn down the last morning of our
stay and Willem found no volunteer to go with him looking at property areas we
haven’t been to before. He set out with
the altimeter, tracking an important parameter of our data acquisition. Outside
of its real beauty, his logic for settling in the Hill Country includes the
centrality and accessibility of the area and the generally agreeable winter
climate. The downside is high humidity and extreme heat, characteristic of low
altitudes in southern Texas in summer. The climate difference between New
Braunfels and higher elevations of the Hill Country may alleviate, but
certainly not overcome, this problem. Hence, Willem noting altitudes wherever
we went during our stay. It now remains for establishing similar profiles for
other relocation candidate places further west, as our trip progresses.
We
prepared to leave the New Braunfels area with a much enhanced favorable
impression. But before that happened the
Saturday morning, we had to have the trailer at Camping World for prearranged
service by 8 am. And so we did, uncoupled the truck, and took off for breakfast
at IHOP. We took it real leisurely, did some shopping and were on the road by 2
pm. Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico was our destination.
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