Our drive from Houston to the Del Rio area on Saturday was uneventful, which is generally what we prefer. We've made this drive before and so had several deja vu moments as we made our way west. Going through San Antonio on I-10 was easy... it was Sunday and there was very little traffic.
Shortly after San Antonio, we jogged a bit south and got on Highway 90 for Del Rio. As lunchtime approached we started looking for a rest stop but there weren't any. So we stopped in Hondo, TX and ate lunch in a quiet furniture store parking lot just off the highway. When we got back on the road, we came upon a rest stop just 7 miles west of Hondo. Figures.
We easily found the
Laughlin AFB Southwind Marina, where we're staying a couple nights. The marina is located within the
Lake Armistad Recreation area, across from the Port of Entry to Mexico,
which is a highway that runs atop Lake Armistad Dam into Mexico. We
liked it at Southwind Marina - it's very laid back. Not a
lot of activity around the campground and not much to do except enjoy
the peaceful surroundings and maybe go fishing or boating. The sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous.
Each campsite has a
shelter, which I'm sure is a life-saver when the weather gets really
hot.
Lynda was taking Barley for
his bedtime walk last night when they ran into a herd of deer. She said there was
at least 5 or 6 of them... the human and both types of four-legged
creatures were quite startled by the encounter. As it turns out,
Whitetail deer are prolific in the Lake Armistad area and we would see
more of them over the next 36 hours.
It was very foggy
the next morning, and we headed into town (Del Rio) in search of a few
groceries and a new bike rack. We were worried our current bike rack
would soon break and someone driving behind us could get hurt. Long
story short, we ended up getting a replacement bike rack from Walmart;
despite information to the contrary on the Laughlin AFB web site,
both the Base Exchange and Commissary are closed on Sundays. A friend of
Lynda's recommended we eat at
Manuel's Steakhouse and so we had lunch
there; the food was good. I don't think there is an abundance of
restaurants in Del Rio and we were glad to know about Manuel's.
After
our shopping adventures, we returned to the campground. By now the fog
has burned-off and it was a beautiful day, so we took the dogs for a
nice long walk. We found ourselves down by the water and let both dogs
off-leash as there was absolutely no-one around - a rare opportunity.
They had a lot of fun in the water and we enjoyed seeing them romping
around without their leashes.
We enjoyed this brief time at the Laughlin AFB Southwind Marina and would be happy to come back here again.
The only not-so-great thing that happened during our stay here is that I
dropped and broke the Nikon camera - bah!!!! So we'll be using our cell
phone cameras for now, until we decide whether and what to get. Dangit.
Next stop is Big Bend National Park - we leave tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!
Starting when we were at Dreher Island State Park in South Carolina, and then again in Florida, we noticed we were having a problem with some uninvited house guests. Whenever the outside temperature cooled off and we would run the heat pump or furnace, we would find Stinkbugs inside the Dolphin - crawling on the ceiling and buzzing around lights.
