Uvalde, Texas

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The dogs and I took a little trip west to Uvalde today. Nice little town. (Please do a Google search of Uvalde; I don't know how to post a link.) They've got SW Texas Jr. College, a Sul Ross University branch and one other school whose name escapes me. Uvalde's got every fast-food restaurant ever developed, I think, and they're all along Hwy. 90. I picked up burgers for us all and found Uvalde Memorial Park right across the street. The Leona River passes through Uvalde, and the city built Memorial Park around where the river crosses Hwy 90 (see at right). Nice little park, nice little walk; the water's crystal clear. The maintenance man I talked to said the river is fed by springs, but that it also has "recycled water" in it. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming maybe it's from the local water treatment plant. I asked him what the trees were. He said cypress, which I thought I recognized by the knobs around the trunk at water level, live oak and cedar. There was another tree, with sort of white-ish mottled bark that had hanging from its limbs what looked like sweetgum balls. Lack of leaves prohibited my identifying it, and the maintenance guy didn't know.

I could sense the elevation rising as we drove, hill after hill, each one higher than the one previous. We passed at least three rivers on the forty-odd-mile drive: the Frio and the Dry Frio, both of which were dry, and the Sabinal, which was running shallow but just as clear as...well, water. Went through several named creeks, too, all of which were bone dry.

This is pretty rugged, scrubby country. Lots of farming, still, but the farther west you go on Hwy. 90, the fewer the farms. (That's my opinion based on having gone only this far west on Hwy. 90; for all I know, the land farther west is even better farm country!)

All my mail from home arrived yesterday: a good day, indeed! My 1099s arrived, as did the mortgage interest statement, so I assembled and mailed all my tax stuff to the accountant in Houston. Also got a nice escrow overage check and a refund from Comcast Cable, so I located a branch of my bank in San Antonio (round trip: 80 miles +) and cashed the checks. Those will pay for a lot of gasoline when I head down the road in a few weeks.