5/27/13: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (Memorial Day):  The Big Whew! Nancy and I continued to have a great time in San Antonio. We waited till the rain let up at midday on Saturday before she collected me. Saturday, I picked up some groceries at her local Trader Joe's and more Medifast meals at a nearby Medifast center. We drove to downtown San Antonio and made a flying pass through the Alamo -- a must-see but nothing either of us was much interested in. The rain started again, but it was nothing like Friday's rain!

   After that, we found a good place for lunch, went to the San Antonio Museum of Art especially for a Latin American folk art exhibit -- very interesting, and then had an early dinner at Luxury, which was very good but an even more basic place than a picnic table at a roadside rest! I had a "naked" hamburger: no bun.

   Nancy and I talked about Cliff (such a great guy; a real loss, but she and he had 50 good years together, and how many among us can say that?) and about our friends from Stanford-in-Italy. I can't believe how long ago that was!

   Sunday we had a relaxed, late start on our way to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens -- two thumbs up! I really enjoyed the plants, the scents, the huge and varied greenhouses, and some old pioneer houses of adobe and wood. Rain caught us, but we dried out a little in the greenhouses, in one of which they have a nice cycad collection. Nancy's daughter, Kathryn, joined us for lunch at a vegetarian place called Green, where we enjoyed a very good lunch. Lovely girl!

   Nancy had a great suggestion: That we see some of the truly historic missions of San Antonio, where they lie roughly in a line, each 3 miles from the other, and all near the San Antonio River. I enjoyed walking in their grounds and seeing their interiors. There are 5 of them, but we saw only 2, the largest and the smallest. Much older than Oceanside's Mission San Luis Rey!

   Then it was time for me to get back to the motel to rest, do laundry, and pack up, dammit.

   Last night I spoke with Scott -- thank you, Scott, for having called -- and he suggested I plan to stay longer in Virginia to see colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, etc. I completely overlooked Virginia's huge historical significance in my pursuit of its natural beauties and of Gettysburg!

   Today, Monday, I was off to the Dallas-Fort Worth area -- Grand Prairie, actually, a little south of there. It was one heck of a miserable drive, with heavy traffic and LOTS of miserable road-work slowdowns between Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth. It took FOREVER to get to this Trader's RV Park, but I'm here safely at last. It's cooling off, and I'm airing the van out. It had got pretty stinky while rusting in the Motel 6 parking lot in San Antonio.

   I have seldom seen a countryside as utterly devoid of interest as that between San Antonio and Grand Prairie -- almost as boring as California's Central Valley. (Even West Texas was more interesting and at least not as urbanized.) While the landscape wasn't perfectly flat, it had hardly any relief: just gently rolling, green, and occasionally wooded, with lots of ugly little communities that, from I35, looked very much like anywhere else. I could almost have gone from one McDonald's to another clear across that half of the state. In fact, I did: I'm learning the fine art of peeing at the next McDonald's without having the grace to buy anything (GUILT!).

   But then the GPS unit vectored me off onto I35W and then onto some godforsaken web of roads that wound from one unmarked farm to another, till I had no idea where I was or where I was going. But, of course, I really had to pee. Desperate, I stopped at a turnout, pulled out the potty, and peed in full view of oncoming traffic. My god, the potty compartment stinks! I'll have to rip out the carpet there.

   The joys of a half-gallon of water a day plus a diuretic. And I thought it was wet in San Antonio.

   Just as I was sure the GPS had led me to East Jesus*, I found the RV park. It's next to the Grand Prairie Municipal Airport, so that will be interesting in the morning. I love to watch planes take off and land. But this place IS East Jesus!

*"East Jesus" is what my brother-in-law Craig calls any place that counts as no place at all.