San Antonio for a week. Or so.

Wednesday. Here we are waiting to hear from one of the agencies that ICBC uses in the USA. Eventually they called and were quite surprised to find that we were in southeast Texas--the ICBC adjuster had led them to believe that we were in California!

Thursday morning the glass shop arrived to check the damage. Took a photo or two, checked the VIN,confirmed that it was rock damage, and that they would call in 5 days. Apparently that is when they should have the windshield.  They did say that once they had it they would install it right away. Hopefully we'll be out of here in a week. Could be a worse place to wait--except for the weather.

We needed a few groceries, Art needed a new pair of jeans (to replace the ones torn in Port Angeles) and his whisky was getting terminally low so off to Costco we went. Attached to the building but having a separate entrance was a Liquor Store.

First stop the liquor store. Here Art rubbed his hands in delight; Cartons of Johnny Walker Red Label, $34.99 for 1.75 Liters ,  Old Pulteney, (a favourite single malt) $34.99 for a 700 ml. bottle.

 LCB prices: Johnny Walker Red Label, 1.75L  59.99 Canadian  ($78.00 US). More than double. Old Pulteney, 71.99 Canadian, ($94.00 US) almost 3 times.

We decided to get the other stuff in Costco and stop here on the way out. Good decision? Bad decision?

In Costco proper we came across a dash-cam on sale. Have been looking for one for some time.

At the checkout Art's Mastercard was declined! As was Gillian's! Paid cash, not enough left for the booze. The check-out clerk said that soon they would take VISA. We later discovered that Costco US doesn't accept Mastercard. I suppose that the clerk thought it was a debit card. Mastercard is relative new for Costco Canada as well. Oh well, back to camp!



Tonight at the "clubhouse" local residents of the park will put on a roast pork dinner with huge baked potato, green beans, salad and desert, all of $6.00 each. We brought enough back to the rig for tomorrow's dinner. 

Friday, October 30

Last night was not a good night for sleep. RAIN "showers"  like the West Coast has never seen. And very windy. Woke frequently to the drumming of a waterfall on the roof. Forecast was for rain all day but it kept pretty dry after we got out of bed this morning.

Later we watched the news. Major flooding in the northern areas; +/- 9 inches of rain over night while we "only" got an inch. Showers?  Then we found that 4 tornados had touched down around San Antonio. One 50 miles to the east, a  couple to the outskirts north and northeast and one to the south east of the city about 18 miles from us where a school was badly damaged--three classrooms destroyed--and a semi tractor and trailer ended upside down on a hotel roof!

More rain and flood warnings for tonight but we have been assured that our area should be fine.

Wish we had brought the inflatable and the lifejackets!

Around noon we headed into San Antonio to do a bit of grocery shopping and to get new phone cards for the US phones. Wind had died down, an event free trip.

Dinner, yep: Roast pork and green beans reheated in the steamer and the potatoes chopped and fried. Enough left over for pork sandwiched for lunch tomorrow and potatoes for hash browns for Art's breakfast in the morning. Not a bad twelve bucks worth.



Saturday
 
At 3:30 AM we woke to the sound of the pitter-patter of rain on the roof and thunder in the distance. Then closer, then wind, then the downpour began. The wind was strong enough to rock the rig a little. Tia was a little nervous but not too bad. She's so deaf now that she barely hears the thunder.

Soon the lightning was all around and the wind was howling. When he realised the rain was spraying in the bedroom window Art got up to the rest that had been left open--the curtain over the drivers window was almost horizontal. The thunder and lightning flashes were almost continuous and for a while seemed right over head. The dinette seat was damp as was the rivers seat. Papers left on the dinette were on the floor.

Most of the lightning was cloud to cloud though Art did see one vertical strike very close by--the sound was only a couple of seconds behind the flash. By 4:00 AM it was all over.

This morning the skies are clear, the sun shining and no wind at all. Even the RV pads are dry except for a few puddles in the hollow spots. No sign of last night's brief storm except that Art's bike, which we had covered with a tarp to protect the electrics from the rain, had blown over.

Later in the afternoon Art took a walk around the park where he discovered that an oak tree had been been up rooted:

Another, only a few hundred feet away from us hit by lightning and a branch had been knocked off. Up close you could still smell the burn.

We were in a pretty good site, the gravel at each end of the concrete parking pad was well drained, even the grass not too soggy. Some sites had several inches of water hiding in the grass or puddled on the dirt and gravel.

Hallowe'en, not a goblin at the door. Though it seems the wind had been a problem for some.