We arrived late but slept well on Sunday night and got a slow start on Monday, getting situated in our new surroundings, and looking forward to being in one place for a few days. With no access to internet, we headed out to find a Starbucks, and ended up driving all over the place to find an actual storefront, ie not a Starbucks in a Target store for instance. Finally we settled in for 3 or 4 hours and got somewhat caught up on email. In spite of being in a highly populated area, Janine mapped out a ‘recommended’ bike ride with some help from Strava. Driving to the ride start, we realized there was no way we would ride our bikes on the urban route it gave us, so we kept driving out toward the edge of Laredo and found that the second half of the route included a 3 mile stretch of road that was closed off to cars (kind of like Laredo’s Humbolt Rd, for those from Chico!). We saw all kinds of folks riding all kinds of bikes there, so we joined in with the locals and ‘did laps’. Ugh! But, a good workout… and no cars!!!
We saw signs everywhere for getting dental work done in Mexico (just a hop and a skip away on the other side of the downtown), and Janine thought about getting her teeth cleaned but couldn’t get an appointment in the 3 remaining days we were there!
Tuesday, January 18, we took our mountain bikes out and rode all the trails in Lake Casa Blanca, which ranged from some flat double-track to a short distance of pretty darn technical uphill/downhill with ruts, washouts and drop-offs. And at the top of the only hill, Casa Blanca’s namesake – the Original Texas White House! Altogether, we managed to drag it out to just over an hour of ride-time… then showered and headed out to get a propane tank filled (we have two) at Tractor Supply, and get Jeri and Squeaky’s special cat food from Petco. More crazy driving around in circles… we would love to know who designs these cities!
A little more about Laredo! We had been to enough stores and public places to notice that we (as whites) were in a distinct minority, so Janine did some googling and found that the City of Laredo is 95.4% hispanic and 4.6% everything else. As we had been told, a visit to Laredo is pretty much a little visit to Mexico! Definitely could have brushed up on our spanish skills… But everyone was friendly and helpful, in spite of our limited-to-english communication! Since we actually had access to TV (90% of stations in Spanish, but a few in English!), we got to see the local news, which in addition to the usual “death and dismemberment” and high school sports stories, featured the news that COVID Omicron was cutting a wide swath through south Texas. And indeed, we noticed just about everyone wearing masks, everywhere we went. So that was reassuring. We did some searching to find any museums or other noteworthy places to visit, but couldn’t find anything we really wanted to do bad enough to face the hassles (and risks!) of COVID and the crazy driving and navigation challenges. So we kept a low profile… and kept an eye on the weather.
We had booked our spot through Friday morning, but on Wednesday the forecast changed to a special Wintercast (accuweather) of snow/sleet on Thursday!!! Hmm… 70 Degree Tour!? It was hard to believe as Wednesday was the most beautiful day we have had on the trip so far. With a forecasted high of 85 (!), we got out early and brought our road bikes back to our Tuesday ride spot for a good (if slightly boring) workout, then changed our reservations to leave Thursday morning and get further south and east to Falcon State Park and slightly warmer, if not any drier, weather. Wednesday afternoon, we finally used our zero gravity chairs for an OUTDOOR ‘happy hour’, and after dinner we did some packing and prep.
Thursday, January 20: Lake Casa Blanca, Laredo to Falcon State Park
True to the forecast, Thursday morning dawned overcast/foggy and shockingly COLD (near freezing!), so we skedaddled! We were on the road by 9am, with a 2 hour drive to Falcon State Park. The day’s drive was on backroads, staying very close to the Rio Grande and international border. Near the town of Zapata, we approached the northern end of Falcon International Reservoir, a a 155 square mile lake created by a dam at the south end, pretty close to our campground. Interestingly, the US/Mexico border somehow runs right through the center of the lake, and there is an international committee that manages the reservoir together. Water is big!
Because the terrain is just mildly rolling, with a lot of brushy undergrowth and a fair amount of small trees, we could see very little of the lake as we approached and even from our campsite. We were able to check in, get to our spot and get set up while the weather remained cold (46 degrees!) and overcast but at least not raining, so we called it a ‘win’. The trailer had dropped to 56 degrees while driving down, so we got the heater turned on right away! Rain started up shortly after, and continued off and on for the rest of the day.
Since it was supposed to get down into the low 30’s with rain for the next couple of nights, we decided to stay “turtled”. With a hybrid trailer, that’s the term for when you keep the canvas beds on the ends of the trailer closed up, and make do for sleeping with the convertible couch (TOO SHORT!), dinette (TOO NARROW!) or as we had previously determined was the best solution for us, unrolling our camping air mattresses on the big expanse of floor area! This works great, and even at about 32 degrees, we can efficiently keep the trailer in the low 60’s overnight if we have electricity (which we made sure we did!). The only downside of this set-up is that it turns out that air mattresses (even covered with mattress pad, sheets and blankets) don’t seem to mix too well with cat claws! All these challenges have been quickly bringing us closer to being ready for a bigger (and 4-season) trailer. And that will mean a bigger truck… more on that later!
We expected Friday, January 21 to be the second of two fairly miserable days (seemingly everywhere in Texas, so no point in moving!), and hoped that Falcon would be a good place to ‘lie low’ waiting for better weather. Friday dawned dark and cloudy and our hopes for even a quick mountain bike ride were dashed when it started raining before 10am. The rain continued throughout the day, but we were able to at least get out of the trailer and walk back out to the Park HQ to check in for the rest of our stay (we had arrived a day early). We only got slighly damp in the mist, and even took the hiking trail on the way back to our campsite after collecting lots of good info from the Park Rangers. We spent the remaining time indoors, blogging and reading.
Saturday was supposed to be nicer, but alas we were doomed to be disappointed. We had an early, quiet night only to wake up Saturday morning to discover that the second of our three air mattresses now seemed to have a leak! Yikes! We spent more indoor time on yoga (Janine – back to almost 100%!) and researching travel trailers online!!! Thank goodness for smartphones! Weather continued to alternate between fog, overcast, rain and mist. At least it did seem to be a bit warmer, with a high in th mid-50s. Around noon, after a look at the radar, we gave up on it clearing, and jumped into the truck and drove into the town of Roma, maybe 20 mintues to the south, to explore a bit. We’d already heard that it was the closest place for laundry (planned for the following Thursday), and wanted to check out the grocery store and restaurant options as well as scoping out some potential routes for bike riding, if the sun ever decided to come out. Plus we were BORED!!!
It continued to rain but that didn’t stop us from doing some quick grocery shopping at the Borderlands Grocery and went into a nearby Fruteria (it really felt like we were in Mexico!) for fresh Horchata (Mike) and a huge cup of fresh Mango (Janine), as well as a few other goodies like jicama and avocadoes. SO GOOD! We found a laundromat with a Mexican restaraunt (what else!!?) next door, both of which which we planned try out on our Thursday jaunt. We drove around a bit, passed the international border crossing (Mike didn’t want to drive in Mexico, and that seemed pretty smart to Janine!), and headed back to the campground with some planned detours to check out some smaller roads for potential biking routes. Unfortunately, all those roads turned out to be dirt (MUD!), but we did find some others that had some potential, including a road to the Salineno Wildlife Refuge right on the border. We had an exciting moment checking out the roads near the State Park entrance, where we found ourselves accidentally driving into the queue to cross the border at another crossing, but luckily we were able to turn around in a parking lot and head back away from the border!
Saturday evening, we took some time for an assessment as we realized the day marked our first month ‘on the road’, officially making this our longest trip to date (our madcap trip with the bogus rental trailer to Alabama in Feb 2021 was the longest previous trip). We agreed that though we still loved the 70 degree tour concept, we couldn’t really rely on a 10-year historical average to predict the current temperatures, as we were now OFFICIALLY ON THE ROUTE (since Laredo), and hadn’t seen a temperature above 50 (and A LOT below) in 3 days. We also acknowledged a major limitation of the route – it simply follows a 70 degree average high, but doesn’t take into account other factors like whether there is anything worth doing along the route, likelihood of rain, humidity, bike-friendliness etc. We knew this when we started, but somehow didn’t expect it to be quite so difficult to find places we could safely/enjoyably bike and sightsee.
We still believed in the 70 degree concept, but we felt we could have a better outcome by finding places nearby that we’d like to explore, and checking the weather a week or so out. We were also becoming believers in the Texas State Parks system, with 89 parks, most of which offer primitive camping (which would be great if we ever get some warmer weather…) for around $10 a night, and electric sites for $15 to 20 – VERY reasonable. Plus we have o ur annual Texas State Parks pass, which gets us entry into all Parks, Wildlife Refuges and Wilderness Areas.We also agreed that we really enjoy this, and we should get serious about ordering a bigger truck and finding a slightly bigger trailer (Mike still believes the truck/tralier combination is best for us, offering a safe place to store our bikes, and a vehicle to use while the trailer is parked). Janine especially wanted to get the ball rolling on this, which meant maybe visiting some RV sales outlets, and maybe heading back to Chico a little sooner rather than later, to expedite the change-over so the next trip can go smoother. So we’re thinking that we’ll spend the next couple months exploring more of Texas, moving north as the weather warms, and then heading west and meandering toward home. It’s good to have a plan!
Sunday, January 23 dawned gloomy yet again, but definitely warmer and by noon the clouds lifted a slight bit and the roads were dry, so we hauled out the mountain bikes and explored in the park. In addition to the 5 or so miles of posted trails (singletrack, smooth sand, mostly flat with fun curves!), we discovered a decent network of doubletrack dirt roads zig-zagging all along the edge of the reservoir within the park. Mike even saw (another) herd of Javelinas, smaller pig-like wild critters with hairy faces, big teeth and almost comically skinny little legs. We had seen a few at a distance, at various places in the last couple weeks, but this was the closest and biggest sighting yet.
It was pretty cold but at least it was dry! Sunday afternoon and evening we were able to tune in to the playoff football games on our Sirius phone app (unsolicited plug: Sirius is a godsend when driving in remote areas!!). Imagine our delight when the Buffalo/Kansas City game coverage was provided by actual DJ’s from BUFFALO! We were alternately laughing and getting a little ‘homesick’ hearing the western NY ‘twang’ accent and advertisements for local businesses. What a kick! Now if only Buffalo had won… To celebrate, we opened up one of the ‘bed-ends’ on the trailer and slept on an actual mattress. Fabulous!
