Day 31--Guadalupe River State Park

It didn’t get as cold as they predicted last night (more like mid twenties) and we made it through just fine. It also warmed up faster than predicted so we were packed up and ready to go by 9:10. We drove up to I10 and drove east about 350 miles to Guadalupe River State Park, near the town of Bourne. Along the way we saw everything from the mountains we were leaving, to very flat plains, to interesting plateaus covered with wind turbines, to the hill country where we are now. We passed herds of sheep, goats, cattle and antelope. We also had the harrowing experience of putting 25.3 gallons of gas into our 26 gallon tank! We figure we had about 10 miles left but couldn’t do anything about it until we finally found a gas station. PHEW!!! DQs being more prevalent than McDonald’s in Texas, we gave in and enjoyed a $5.00 Birthday Bash meal of their Hungr-Buster hamburger, fries, drink and a small Blizzard. We saved the Blizzard coupon to enjoy another day. As we drove through Bourne we did some much needed grocery shopping before coming to the State Park. The park is another beauty and there seem to be only about a dozen sites occupied of the 90 some here. One sobering sight—a few campsites down from ours there is a site marked off with caution tape. Within the tape there are obvious signs of a large fire, including the remains of long awning and other parts of an RV. We wonder what happened and pray no one was hurt and that they had insurance to cover the catastrophe. The campsites are up on the bluff, high above the river. After setting up we rode our bikes down (and I do mean DOWN!!) to the picnic area along the river. It’s very beautiful and wild because there are no dams above this area to tame the river. There are plenty of warnings about flash floods and the river has worn a deep canyon, especially on the other side from here. It’s very popular for tubing, rafting, canoeing and kayaking in the summer, but it would be pretty cold right now. This is going to be good place to stay for the next 5 nights, while we travel around the area and see Austin and San Antonio and their environs.