After Big Bend we travelled west deeper into Texas to visit some friends and fix various issues with the truck. In Del Rio we had to buy some parts and hack together the electrical connection between the truck and camper before sunset. We visited an old friend in Corpus Christi who is the radio personality for the local CHL hockey team - The Rays. Listen for him soon in the NHL- Josh Bogorad. Then drove up to San Antonio and got stuck in massive traffic for the "San Antonio Festival" before checking out the Alamo and the surprisingly impressive Riverwalk. We then moved on to Austin to visit a friend we made on the recent China trip. He took us out on his boat onto Lake Austin which his house backs up to. Earlier in the day we bit the bullet and got the "check engine" light looked at. As we all know, going into a shop to diagnose a "check engine" light is not too dissimilar to visiting the proctologist. After a few hours we now had a new idle air control valve, a fresh set of muffler bearings, a lighter wallet and a funny walk.

On the way east out of Texas, we stopped at Galveston and took a ferry to a shoreline road that used to go further until hurricane Katrina made it impassible.