¡Los Tres Amigos en San Antonio!

A couple of Scott's friends from Lincoln happened to both be in Dallas for different reasons this past week so they took the opportunity to take a road trip down to San Antonio to visit Scott. They crammed a lot of activities into two days...Renee just tried to stay out of their way!

They started the weekend with a tour of Scott's work. (Cody was the photographer, notice his pictures were very artistic!)

Cody.
After that they visited the Alamo...
Saturday afternoon they flew to Mustang Beach for some seafood.
Downtown San Antonio.
The beach.

Coming in to land at Mustang Beach airport.

The marina at sunset.

Coming back to San Antonio at night.

Sunday morning they went to the river walk before it got too hot. We've tried to go a couple times (the day after Thanksgiving when they turn on all the Christmas lights and New Year's Eve) but it was so busy both times we bailed.

Dana.

A tour boat.

An amphitheatre (notice Scott running up the stairs to the right).

We then drove through McAlister Park so amidst all the aviation talk Dana got to enjoy some deer sightings.

Sunday for dinner we all drove to Cooper's in Llano. From there Dana and Cody went back to Dallas and we went back home.

It was a ton of food, but they were troopers...

You, me, and an incontinent beagle makes three....

Two weeks ago Bridget was severely ill. We had gotten the vomiting under control with a nightly Pepcid AC, had switched her food yet again, and things were looking up in the beagle health department. Then out of the blue two weeks ago she started not only vomiting again but suffering from sudden and violent bowel evacuations. Of course we rushed right to the vet but it took about 12 hours for the medicine to start getting things under control, and they were the LONGEST 12 HOURS OF OUR LIVES. You might say to yourselves, "can't you just contain her in her kennel until the situation is under control?" Yes, that is what we did...but you have to understand that if we turned our back for literally five seconds while getting ready to take her outside there would be a new problem on the carpet somewhere. And we soon also learned that her being in her kennel wasn't enough due to the explosive nature of the problem (the kennel has slots in the side and not only the carpet but the walls suffered casualties). So anywho, we quarantined her in the middle of the kitchen, took her outside every half hour, and cleaned her kennel and switched out the sheets several times that day. We switched her food to Science Diet (the vet suspects a food allergy), continued with the Pepcid, gave her the medicine, had our carpets professionally cleaned, and things went back to normal (except Bridget didn't care for the Science Diet so she went on a hunger strike and no longer got people food and ice cream, but too bad, life's rough sometimes, which we patiently explained to her).

Until last Wednesday, when it happened all over again.

We wasted no time quarantining her in the kitchen, rushed her from the kennel to the door at breakneck speed every half hour to go outside, and called the vet. We got her on fast-acting liquid medicine and had only one small incident in the living room, which we were able to clean and sanitize ourselves. We now have her on allergy-free Prescription Diet food (bland as bland can be but she seems to like it more than the Science Diet) and are hopeful this will do the trick. We'll see what happens when her pills run out and cross that bridge when we get to it. She isn't acting sick at all now, is full of energy, and is very put out at not getting any tasty people food. Anytime she's sick you have to feel terrible for her because you can tell she is just so ashamed and embarrassed, but shame and embarrassment don't help to lift beagle poo stains at 2am. So it's to the kennel with her, which she whines about because she hasn't been locked up anywhere for years but that's the scary new world we live in now and she'll have to deal with it :-).

She's back to 100% now...
and looking quite svelte since her hunger strike!
We also (horror of horrors) collected a stool sample to have tested, which came back negative for whatever it is it tests for. We also had a blood test done which came back normal. We'll see how this new food works, hopefully it's a winner!

Possum Kingdom Vacation

We spent this past weekend at Possum Kingdom Lake, which is a couple hours west of Ft. Worth, about a 5 hour drive north of San Antonio. Renee's aunt and uncle were kind enough to let us use their lake house, boat, and jet ski for the weekend, and did we have a blast! Everything was absolutely beautiful, it was one of the most fun vacations we've ever had!

These cliffs are called "Hell's Gate." Cliff jumping is popular at Possum Kingdom in general, and we heard that every Fourth of July there are usually a couple people who actually jump from here. You can get a sense of perspective with the boat to the side.

View from the side (absolutely gorgeous scenery!).

These cliffs are a lot shorter, but still way too high for us :-) There are several people jumping in this picture.

We spent our time boating, jet skiing, fishing, and swimming. This is Scott tearing it up on the jet ski.This was the swimming dock right outside the condo. The water was super deep pretty much everywhere.

Cannonball off the boat! SPLASH!Boat slips in the background.
Inside Hell's Gate is a swimming area where people hang out with their boats anchored. Friday there was no one there but Saturday afternoon there were a lot of boats, hard to guess exactly how many. There was even one string of boats tied together that was 10 boats long! It was a really cool atmosphere, people had their stereos on their boats playing and people were just hanging out, having a good time.Friday night we went to Renee's aunt and uncle's favorite area restaurant, Wildcatter Ranch. We had a window seat, and the view was beautiful! We didn't realize the hill country covered so much of Texas...Possum Kingdom is located in the northern hill country and the southern hill country begins just north of San Antonio.
There were a couple of horses right by the restaurant, and one came over to say "hi" to Renee, probably because he thought she had food! Saturday morning we went fishing off of the swimming dock, casting back towards the rocks where Scott had a feeling there may be some tasty panfish (although we were catching and releasing). He was right...This was the swimming hole we pulled 20 fish from in a little less than 2 hours! 12 catfish and 8 bluegill (we were going for quantity, not quality :-). We couldn't hardly keep up...as soon as the hook hit the water the bobber went down...and who knows how many more got away with our bait that we didn't snag!
These beasts were caught with regular earthworms on light sporting tackle. A friendly black lab came to check out what we had going on.
This crane (on the rock outcropping, hard to see in this picture) had the same idea we did and was fishing in the same spot the next morning.

The sunset from the balcony.

We had such a fantastic time, a huge thanks to Renee's aunt and uncle!!!

Fireworks In Seguin, TX

Saturday night we headed to Seguin, TX for their fireworks show. Seguin is about one hour east of San Antonio on 1-10 towards Houston and has a population of about 25,000. We had never been there before and wanted to try and avoid the 1 1/2 million other people in San Antonio wanting to see fireworks :-) The show in Seguin was at a golf course and park and we decided to just set up in the back of the truck and enjoy our own box seats!

Behind us was a baseball diamond. We had our soda and seeds and were ready for the show!
There were a lot of other people who had the same idea...no walking (it was still over 100 degrees at 7:30) and no crowds. We had had a busy day bike riding and it was nice to just sit back and relax!

Fredericksburg Fly-In

Saturday morning Scott and his friend Brad (a coworker who is also a pilot) flew to the Fredericksburg, TX airport for breakfast at the diner there. There were planes there from all over, but most were from Texas.

Coming in to land at the airport, the diner is the big hangar-shaped building.

Brad getting some take-offs and landings in.
The front of the diner, facing the ramp.
Inside the diner.
View of the ramp from a booth.

There were all types of different planes, it was kind of like a mini air show!

Luckenbach, TX

For the past couple weekends, Scott has been finishing up his ground school for his commercial rating so lately we haven't been able to do anything fun. He took his written test Thursday and passed with flying colors so we had some time this weekend after he flew on Saturday. He still has some flying to do before he can take his check ride but he hopes to be done in the next month or so. Unfortunately at least one flight a week gets cancelled for weather (which is funny because he got his instrument rating a few months ago so now he can fly in clouds, but the commercial rating requires training on maneuvers in a complex aircraft in visual conditions only, so for now he's back to cancelling for weather!) So we'll see, but he's more than halfway done now so it's just a matter of time...

We decided to find Luckenbach, Texas, as a wise man (Jim) once sent us on a quest to do just that, saying it was very hard to find. Well, being the arrogant young whippersnappers we are we just assumed he didn't know about GPSs or MapQuest, but as it turns out it WAS hard to find! And the reason is because it's not really a town, it's more of a gathering place. But, first thing's first, we stopped at Whittington's in Johnson City for some of their world famous turkey jerkey.

From Whittington's we headed west to Luckenbach, which was on a map of the area we got at Whittington's, but when we got there we were confused because although the sign said Luckenbach, there is no town. The sign is just on the side of the highway. But there were a lot of cars parked in a big grass field so we went to check it out. People were getting out of their cars and walking, as if to some sort of event.

We parked and went to investigate. What it is, is a place where people come to listen to live music, just hang out, and buy souvenirs saying they've been to Luckenbach. A good many people there were taking pictures like us so it's hard to say how many locals were there and how many tourists.
You could get your picture taken with a longhorn steer.
This is the band playing Saturday night. They were really good and it would have been fun to hang out and listen, but it was 100 degrees (even at 7pm) and Bridget looked like she was going to keel over after only 10 minutes of walking.
This is Grape Creek, which runs along the east side of Luckenbach.

Why drink the purified water we brought with us when you can just drink creek water? Mmmmmm, creek water.

There were a couple of fire pits too, although no one was using them at the time. This is looking back towards where the band was playing.

Random rooster.

The post office is now a general store where you can buy souvenirs.

There were a lot of motorcycles people rode in, which is apparently common, and then yesterday was also the Luckenbach car show so there were still a few cars left from that, though not very many. We had seen a lot of classic cars on the highway and figured there was a car show somewhere but turns out it was right where we were going!

Bruno

Thursday evening we were walking Bridget on a side street along our usual route (when we don't take her to the park), when we found Bruno. He looked like a Chihuahua/Pug mix and although he didn't have any tags, he did have a collar. He was a very sweet dog, well-behaved (and housebroken, as it turns out), but no one in the near vicinity knew anything about him. We couldn't just leave him there so we carried him home for the night. He's definitely someone's pet...he likes sitting on your lap on the couch and is used to sleeping in someone's bed (he had to content himself with the loveseat instead). The next morning Renee took him to the apartment complex's office where we found him to see if anyone was looking for him. They hadn't heard anything but did put up signs and one of the employees took him to her mom's house while they tried to locate the owner. He and Bridget got along great and she was happy to have a friend stay the night!

Renee plans to stop by the apartment's office early next week and see if anyone ever claimed him.