Tuesday I took a little tour of Lockhart’s historic square. It’s not like I haven’t been there before, but it’s been a long time since I have been to the downtown square area of the town. I snapped pictures of the courthouse and of the library, both of which are just gorgeous buildings. As soon as I can, I’ll upload some of those to the blog. The connection here at the park isn’t conducive for uploading anything, really. There just so happened to be a geocache on the library grounds, so I snagged it! I’m still on track to achieve my goal of finding a cache at every place we stay. I also stopped at a little bakery across from the courthouse and bought some kolaches, not things I can find in bakeries up north. I love the things! Basically, they are round pastries that are filled with something either sweet or savory. Quite tasty!
My aunt said I could come over and do wash at her place, so you best believe I took advantage of that opportunity. I appreciated not having to feed quarters into a machine and being able to sit on a nice sofa in the A/C and work on my laptop at speeds faster than dialup. Plus I got to visit with my family some more, and that’s always a bonus. Apparently, my uncle has been shooting an airgun at the squirrels in his backyard trying to keep them from raiding his garden, and my aunt is very upset that’s he’s “massacring” the poor little things. They’ve been married for more than 50 years, and they bicker like it sometimes. It’s actually really cute. When I was done my aunt’s, I headed back to the campsite, just in time for a little rain to fall on my clean laundry as I carried it to the truck.
During the course of the day, Lex had managed to spill water on her brand-new keyboard and short it out. She pointed out that our journey has become a comedy of errors, and she’s not wrong. We have had an unusually high number of mishaps on this trip. I keep hoping we’re done breaking, injuring, and wrecking things for a while. At any rate, we had to run into San Marcos, a college town 18 miles away, so we could go to Office Depot and get her another one. While we were there, we bought a file cabinet to replace our rather battered one, and I got a new backpack. My beloved star-covered pack was starting to disintegrate. We both love office supply stores, too much, I think. We always spend too much at them.
For dinner, we stopped at Jason’s Deli, another restaurant we don’t have in Maryland and had salads and baked potatoes. After all the burgers and barbecue, it was a welcome change. I noticed that across the street there was a Half Price Books. I cannot tell you how much I miss that particular store, so naturally we had to go after dinner. I broke my own rule and bought some books without having first gotten rid of some. Whoops! I suppose I’ll have to get to reading so I can unload some of these tomes.
By the time we got back to the park, it was after 9 p.m., and we were beat. I swapped out the file cabinets and walked the dogs before calling it a night.
Today, Wednesday, I had to be in San Marcos at 10 a.m. to meet with the insurance adjuster so we could get the dent I put in the truck fixed. There is a place called Geico Collision Express here. I’ve never used one of these centers before, but basically, the customer can have the adjuster look at the vehicle, and the body shop is across the street, so the body guy comes over and discusses the repair, and then the car rental company drops off a vehicle while they take the damaged one to be fixed. The whole process and all the paperwork was done in under half an hour, my deductible was waived, and I got a really nice rental for only $4.79 a day out of my own pocket. The truck may be back to us as early as tomorrow evening. I hope so. We’re trying to stick to our travel schedule, but if not, we can probably stay here another night.
I bought what I hoped would be some really good Tex-Mex for lunch, but it was the opposite of good. Ugh. They can’t all be winners, I guess. Not sure how anyone gets carnitas wrong, but they sure did. Not yet sure what we’re doing about dinner tonight, but I can tell you we aren’t going back to that place.
I have papers to grade and am running a day behind. My connection issues are complicating the course I’m teaching. This is the last week of the course, so it’s a bad time to have problems getting online. If necessary, I’ll go into town tomorrow so I can actually get student papers returned.
If you travel a lot and you haven’t figured it out already, Redbox is your friend! I love being able to check out movies in one town and return them in another. I also love the Redbox iPhone app that lets me find my nearest Redbox and then see exactly what movies are in it and then reserve the one I want. Then I can pick it up anytime within a twenty-four hour period. Nice! No wonder Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and the rest are being run out of business. Netflix and Redbox have tapped into the movie viewer who isn’t interested in wandering the aisles of a store trying to find just the right video. This is video rental for the Milennials (and the rest of us who spend time online).
If everything works out here, tomorrow will be our last day here. I’m supposed to have a lunch date with my aunt, so I need to call her and firm up our plans.
And thus ends the third week of our trip. Hard to believe it! Only five more weeks to go.
