Leaving Brownsville was a little bit like starting the trip again from "home". I left fairly early, drove about 6 hours to San Antonio and found a parking garage near the RiverWalk and the Alamo. As I was getting my backpack ready, I noticed that the key didn't work on my driver's side door. The problem had been building slowly, but now I realized that I couldn't unlock the camper from that door at all. No big deal - certainly not something to give up my Riverwalk for!

So I spent several hours on the Riverwalk, which follows the (redirected) flow of the San Antonio river as it winds through downtown. It's pretty cool, with both banks of the river lined with restaurants and shops, so it felt like walking in a canyon. I took lots of pictures, of course. And then I took a few minutes to visit the Alamo. I drove to the Medina Lake Thousand Trails for that night, where I'd stayed before - the place with an outrageous number of tame deer wandering around.

The next morning, I discovered that the driver's side door was now so broken that I had to deal with it. (It still opened from the inside, but that was it - pretty awkward.) I used my GPS and my computer and the phone book and asked some locals... but couldn't find what seemed like the right place to have it looked at. I stopped at a garage right by the camp ground but he was too busy - so I decided to just head on out and see what developed. As I was driving along an access road near an interstate, I saw this sign, and it appealed to me. In keeping with the good luck I've had on this trip, the folks here were friendly and fast. They fixed the door in 15 minutes for $24. Nice.

Finally I got on the road to Balmorhea State Park (about 6 hours away). It was twilight when I got there, but I had a nice evening walk, a good shower and a fine meal - then slept soundly.

The drive toward Guadalupe was interesting - seeing the mountain range getting closer every hour. Since it was so cold, I decided against the no-electricity campground and instead spent a couple of lovely days at Camp Washington Ranch, a conference facility near Carlsbad, NM that let me park and plug in for $15 a night. I drove south to hike the beautiful McKittrick Canyon in the Guadalupe National Park (in Texas). I separated the photos of the plants on that hike. The next day I toured Carlsbad Cavern (in New Mexico).

From there is was a four hour drive over a "cliff" to Deming, NM to stay at the Lobo Rancho RV Park. They had a great laundry room (which was good, since I was going to be without such access for a few days) and WiFi that worked in the laundry room, so I did my taxes on-line. Whoo whoo! As I expected, I got a lot of bucks back. Finally, around noon, I headed on to Tuscon!

Before dark, I found the church where the dance was going to be. It was near the University of Arizona, whose public WiFi reached the driveway. The Tucson group was in the middle of a pot luck dinner which had followed a family dance, so there were lots of little people running about. Kind of fun :-)

The dance was good, the people very nice - and they had the most clever way to catch drips from water jugs that I've ever seen! See here for some photos. And also worth noting: this was the first dance on this trip where I didn't know a single person at the dance. Yep, it took nine months for that to happen! I guess the distance from Austin, TX to Tucson, AZ was finally far enough to do the trick. After the dance, I followed Lorien home and had a good sleep in her rainy backyard, along with Ken and Judy from Oregon!