San Antonio Texas

San Antonio 2014-04-01

We’ve relocated to another Thousand Trails campground, this one on the west side of San Antonio. The campground sits adjacent to a lake with an interesting story. First off this 8478 acre lake is almost dry holding only 3.1 percent of its capacity. Medina Dam, built in 1913 as a privately financed project, created the lake to supply irrigation water for local agricultural use. Because of the constant drain for agriculture and the cyclical regional droughts the level of the lake has had wild swings over the years.

This is the upper reaches of the lake which is completely dry, 18 miles to the left at the dam there is still a pool but the water level is down 91 feet from full

The current dilemma is partially caused by man and has its roots in 2002 when the lake was overflowing and threatening the dam. The water level had to be partially lowered to repair and strengthen the dam. About the same time the Water authority decided it could increase revenue by selling water to the city of San Antonio. You can probably guess what happened next, they haven’t had enough rain to refill the lake. In the last three years they haven’t had a drop of rain anywhere in the area that feeds the lake.

Floating dock at the campground

In my last post I wrote about the rolling hills and everything being green back in Columbus which is about 165 miles east of here. All that changed abruptly when we got to the west side of San Antonio. The terrain is rocky and arid with mountains rising to the west.

Bakery at Mexican Market

Millie and I drove into San Antonio today (Tuesday) and purchased two day passes for a hop-on hop-off trolley tour of the city. We only got off at two spots today; a Mexican market where we enjoyed a delicious lunch at the historic Mi Tierra Cafe, which is reported to be Bill Clinton’s favorite restaurant.

Millie and our waitress at Mi Tierra Cafe

The second attraction we spent time at today was of course the Alamo. Before Misiόn San Antonio de Valero became the Alamo it had a long and varied history dating back to 1724. It will forever be remembered for March 6 1836 when 200 men took a stand against 4000 invaders. None of the defenders survived the battle but their sacrifice rallied the movement to secede from Mexico and eventually become the state of Texas.

Wednesday we will return and continue our historic journey through San Antonio.