Why I chose a beach party hotel for the Corpus stop is unclear, but the bar closed at 11 PM and the downstairs party receded away and left us like driftwood on the beach. After some more planning and plotting to hit all the remaining checkpoints, we slept. When we arose, we found that heavy fog had rolled in overnight - the same front line that we had crossed several times already. We were (or at least I was) a bit stiff, but packed the car and got started on the last day of our journey.
I was extraordinarily grateful the whole time that the Spider was shockingly comfortable to be in for such extended periods. The driver's seat has a pan that has collapsed from rust, but even with the cushion probably sitting on the floorpan, it was still fairly comfortable. The passenger seat without such disintegration was even more so, with the added bonus of the under-knee cargo space. The floormats sure helped hide some of the rust, although they did like to slide around.
The fog was getting thicker as we drove off, and the Harbor Bridge disappeared into a murky cloud as we crossed. The wipers were somewhat effective, and once the car warmed up we managed to decipher a combination of the climate controls that got the demister working well enough. But by the time we reached the first checkpoint, we were in some real pea soup.
We drove on and got out into clearer weather as we found the giant squirrel in Sinton. The next stop was in Cotulla. The road out of Sinton turned onto FM 624, and we fortunately fueled before we left town, as the next thing we saw was a warning of desolation ahead.
This was in no way an exaggeration. FM 624 past this sign is a bumpy, uninterrupted stretch of scrubby nothingness. The desolation might have been magnificent if the road hadn't been so rough, but the asphalt appeared to have been buckling for decades into rolling hills which caused the Spider to bottom out more than once.
This was, without a doubt, the most annoying part of the drive. In spite of the optimistic speed limit of 75, we were limited to 65 or so by the heaving road surface. The bumpiness meant one could not just snooze off, and we only saw maybe 3 vehicles pass us going the other way. No one ever hove into view from behind, which meant we were probably making a bad choice.
But nothing happened except the occasional scrape of the undercarriage over a road hump, and eventually we began to see signs of civilization, with low buildings and parked truck. The the outskirts of a small town trickled into view, and this was Cotulla, where a statue of LBJ resides. We poked around a little, looking for the bronze statue, and finally found it outside the LaSalle County Appraisal District building.
It was getting on towards noon, and I began looking at our routes, since we had to be back in San Marcos at Harris Hill by 6 PM, and this was only our third checkpoint of 12, including the feat of stupidity and the Lemons Find-It, which was a rusty Renault 4CV on a pole.
I did have a dogeared ace up my sleeve, however. The next couple of checkpoints were in Pearsall, a town with which I was extremely familiar since my mother grew up there and where some of my relations still reside. I knew exactly where the Renault was, as my uncle used to own the car wash where it sits atop a pole, and it is a familiar landmark from my youngest years, minus a window or two shot out by roving Pearsall youth over the years. The Pearsall peanut was also a very familiar sight, except they had refurbished and moved it (and in my opinion it was not an improvement).
But the real ringer was that my cousin still lived out near town, and we rang him up and made a short detour down the old road to Tilden to see him. The feat of stupidity was to mount something on a pole on the car, and he hooked us up with not only a pole but an awesome deer skull complete with antlers that we stuck on. We mounted it on the car and were mightily pleased with this, but decided not to leave it permanently as I had prescient visions of the chaos that would result if a fully formed deer skull crashed through someone's windshield on 35. In the end we only got 50 points for it, but agreed this was undervalued.
We also smashed the pumpkins we'd been carrying with us across most of the state, as there was a handy berm, and got the latest location of the peanut. It used to be on Oak Street south of town, but apparently had recently been moved in front of the HEB (and to my eyes, reduced in size).
I also took a picture of the old Mercedes that has been on the property since, well since always. It's a 1960 220sb, which my uncle always said he drove in a parade in Pearsall once.
It was nearly 1 PM and we said our goodbyes and got under way into town. We found the Renault and the peanut, and then headed towards Hondo for the next stop.
I began calculating via the AI what our schedule for the remaining stops looked like. We were only a couple of hours from San Marcos, but after Hondo the route took us back out into the hill country through Bandera, Medina, Ingram, Comfort, and back across to Canyon Lake. I began to realize this was still a rather diabolically long way to go, and it was after 1 PM. I got an opinion from the AI, with a healthy margin of error added, that if we didn't fool around we'd get back to Harris Hill with 45 minute or so to spare. The margin was wide enough, we felt, to stop somewhere for a late lunch, and we sped on to Old D'Hanis and the checkpoint of St. Dominic's.
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