On the road in south west Texas with Cathy taking her turn to drive, so thought I’d give myself a head start on tonight’s ‘blog report’. It will be our last evening together for about six weeks so thought I’d better not spend it on the computer!

We just pulled up somewhere between San Angelo & Abilene (so many of these Texas towns remind me of songs! – “Abilene, Abilene, prettiest woman I’ve ever seen”…..) to take some photo’s of a huge area of wind farms. They look quite spectacular and personally I think they are far more aesthetically pleasing than many other things dotting the landscape, and yet that is one of their strongest criticisms, being peoples opinion that they don’t want them in sight. I wouldn’t mind a few at home…especially if it meant that we had less expensive power bills.

After staying the night in Austin we decided to head on further down the road to visit the bigger metropolis of San Antonio, so we ended up back onto the crowded I 35 & locked “The Alamo” into the trusty GPS. For some reason I had originally pictured the Alamo as being somewhere out in a God forsaken piece of desert, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The well restored ruins of the famous battle are right in the middle of the city, and in fact the whole area is well managed and a huge tourist attraction. Even the countryside all the way down from Dallas is a lot higher rainfall than I had imagined & no wonder the area has a long history of nations fighting over it. I suppose if the land was not that good than the population would not be up around the thirty million mark for Texas like it is.

And they must all own two cars!!

There was some serious traffic congestion, even on the Interstate, getting in to the centre of San Antonio, but once we were in near the Alamo Plaza it lightened off to the extent that it was quite easy to even get a parking place close enough to walk around everywhere. We got a room at another ‘Holiday Inn’, this time with a back door opening right onto the “Riverwalk” which is beautifully tree lined & dotted with restaurants, bars & shops etc and winds its way for quite a way in that part of the city. Had another talk with Slacky back in Bre, and this time he put us on to another bar with live music, this time with the salubrious name of “Sam’s Burger Joint” a short taxi ride away… Well, the ‘burger part’ was very average indeed and I at least was less hungry at the end of the meal than the beginning…more out disgust then actual sustenance! Also, the clientele were not quite as clean cut as the night before with more “ink & steel” involved in the personal makeup than BHP & Rupert Murdoch could come up with. The bartender had a big contraption sticking out of one side of his face….and I’m still not sure if it was a part ‘his look’ or in fact he had a broken jaw & it was there simply to speed up the healing process. Never the less he was a friendly helpful guy & a good barman.

Things definitely improved after that though when they let us into the main venue & the ‘lead act’ was a terrific singer and played for an hour or so to warm the gathering crowd up. We got a seat with the father of the main bands bass player, who had come down to San Antonio from Washington State to hear the band. Their name is “The Band of Heathens” (a nice bunch of lads really!) who have been together for a little over two years & play a very good brand of ‘country rock’ with the occasional slower ballad thrown in. It was a great performance from a bunch of guys with plenty of talent & I wouldn’t be surprised to see this group go places. Three of them took turns being the lead singer & it was all original music, written by themselves. Might even get the chance to get them out to “Bokhara Hutz” one day, if we can get our entertainment manager on the job. 

Anyway, needless to say we had a great night & didn’t get going too fast the next morning….

Did have a look around the city a little more though & went through a museum & had lunch before heading west out of the city to look for some drier country. Went as far out as Sonora and the landscape started to flatten out and get harder looking with plenty of limestone in the landscape out there. Plenty of green grass though, and also quite well timbered with Juniper pine, Ironwood & Mesquite. Today heading north again the country became more ‘red’ looking, with not all that many cattle at all to be seen. Lots of goats though, as I guess they are using them for scrub (or ‘brush’ as its called here) control, and there seems to be a big infusion of Boer goat involved.

We had a quiet night last & caught up on emails and telephone calls, although we did go down town for some Tex Mex dinner, which we have frequently done. Quite cheap, nice & very filling if we are careful not to get too ambitious with the hot stuff and in fact we just pulled up and had lunch at another one. “La Familia” or The Family Restaurant.

Every town we have been through it has been highly noticeable the numbers of vehicles parked outside of the various churches. Being Sunday here at the moment it is understandable of course, but the numbers are quite incredible. Also every town, even the very small (by US standards!) have numerous churches of every denomination imaginable….and quite a few of course that have been recently ‘imagined’, due to favourable taxation laws etc. The US really is a land of geographic variation with a massive diversity of culture and beliefs.

There is an extraordinary amount of media coverage, as you could imagine, regarding the upcoming Federal elections on the TV and radio. Some (or most) talk back shows are 100% political commentary. I almost said ‘debate’, but its not like that…..more like one station will be totally democrat & the other will be totally republican. Old Johnny Laws wouldn’t be able to find a fence to sit on over here….

I’ll add some more comment on my take on the whole American political process tomorrow while waiting for my flight out.

Hard to believe the US leg of my tour is almost done & I’ll miss traveling with my trusty partner Cathy. We both would have loved to have Harriet with us as well….maybe next year when we come back over with Slacky to check out the “Honky Tonks” again….

Cheers all.