We started out by seeing Alamo Ranch, the housing development that had been recommended to us the night before. We had been looking forward to seeing new housing in Texas for a long time. We were told in Delaware in a new housing development that Texas was where getting a brand new house built to your specification quickly and cheaply really works, and boy, does it work! These houses were amazing. They were huge and chock full of the kind of modernity we are looking for. Have a look at the video for the specifics:
As it was labor day weekend, my friends in Austin were not in Austin, so we made a change of plans. They were camping west of San Antonio near Rio Frio (which means cold river).
A holiday weekend works poorly with planning as you go, but we had little choice. We really don’t know where we’ll be from one day to the next and we almost never book a hotel earlier than the morning of. We ended up booking a hotel in the afternoon that was one of, if not the most, expensive of the trip, not because it was especially great like our few times splashing out to get the most of the place like in Key West or Panama City Beach, but just because everything else was booked. Fortunately we went there before finding my friends, because we got their last king bed on the ground floor. Even though it was a pretty average hotel otherwise, having a ground floor, pool side room was nice.
After checking in, we heading out in the middle of nowhere. It took ages for various reasons, so we got there about an hour later than we had hoped. None the less, we did have a great time.
We did something that apparently Texans do all the time, which is to just hang out in a tube on the river and chill out with their friends and the other people they meet while doing this.
We met people from all over Texas, all of whom were very nice. Here is the video and a few pics:
Trying to Get in a Tube
We stayed quite a while, but headed the long way back to Uvalde where we were staying. Once back, we had a swim and tried something I hadn’t had since I was a kid: Little Caesar’s. It is the cheapest way of eating without having to try to cook something in a weak hotel microwave that we’ve discovered. A large pepperoni pizza was only 6 dollars, which is less than we have often paid for thing we prepare ourselves even. It wasn’t bad pizza either.