part two...

 Today is "Girls Write Now Day" and so I have.  Here is the second installment of my honeymoon memoir:

Honeymoon, part two: Dealing with Mexican food, the flash flood, Big Bend National Park and spiders.

We spent a delightful three days in San Antonio enjoying the Hemisfair.  We rode the monorail and strolled the brand new River Walk.  I discovered that my new husband did not like Ferris wheels.  I thought this was interesting because I had a boyfriend in high school who also wouldn’t ride Ferris wheels.  He claimed men and women had different centers of gravity and that made him feel unbalanced.  But I digress.  I discovered that Mexican food prepared in a southwestern restaurant was absolutely delicious and I became a true fan.  Washed down with Sangria it’s even better.  When we were dating, my now spouse had cooked a Mexican meal for me once which consisted of canned tamales and left me thinking that I really didn’t like Mexican food.  I’m so glad he insisted I try the real thing.  We explored all the exhibits from North and South America and I remember being amazed at the German influence on Texas history.  Almost all of my ancestors were from Germany, but I had never heard of any of them moving to Texas, all over the mid-west of course, but Texas?  I don’t remember the numbers now but many many Germans had settled in Texas. 

But soon it was time to move on.  We were heading to El Paso and Big Bend National Park.  It was hot, after all it was July in Texas, and no AC in our car.  We saturated some wash cloths (our own not from the apartment) with cold water, made sure we had plenty of drinking water, and headed west. As I remember it, it was one long straight road, with no speed limit.  After some hours of driving, we came upon a river (well at least a stream) running across the road.  My husband was driving.  He stopped at the edge of the little flash flood and casually said “Why don’t you walk across first to see how deep it is?”  Since I had no experience with water running across roads in Texas, I got out of the car, wearing shorts and flipflops, in case you’re wondering, and waded across the stream.  As I recall, it was never more that ankle deep and actually quite refreshing.  Later Tom said he didn’t really think I’d do it, but I was across before he realized I was serious.

We eventually arrived in El Paso, spent a night and day there, saw all the highlights he wanted to show me and even walked across the bridge into Juarez.  You didn’t need a passport and it was all very casual back then.  I bought a beautiful, tooled leather purse which I use for many years.  Then we moved on to our next camping site, Big Bend National Park.  Tom decided that it would be cooler down by the river, so we camped in one of the campgrounds there.  I should mention here that I was not overwhelmed by the Rio Grande. At that time of year it was more of a Rio Trickle. There were other campers around but not too many and public restrooms with showers, very welcome.  As we settled down in our little tent on top of our sleeping bags (it was too hot to sleep in them), we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of frogs and a champion snorer camped on the far side of the campground.  Some time after we fell asleep, I woke up to something crawling down my back and started screaming.   Evidently, I yelled “Get it off! Get it off!” several times quite loudly.  My poor sleep befuddled husband woke up, lit a flashlight and searched all around to see what was tormenting me.  Finally, he realized that there was no rampaging spider or scorpion, just a trickle of sweat running down my bare back.   The next day we moved our tent up hill to a higher and slightly cooler elevation.  Not too surprisingly there were lots more people camped up there.

To be continued -

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