WE MADE IT TO BROWNSVILLE ...

... too bad the bus didn't.

We were up and down for breakfast again by 8 AM. No reason to get going ...

At 10 AM I make my morning call to the shop, all they say is 'they are working on it, call back after noon.

11 AM is check out time so we are out of there. We head to the Missions National Historic Park. We spend an hour or so there watching a movie and walking the grounds. There are five Missions in San Antonio including the Alamo. The Alamo is downtown, this one is still surrounded by city. The church area looks like it is still used and a lot of the Mission has been rebuilt.

While we are at the Missions, I get a call from my local company wanting to know if I can work Saturday. Nope, I am still in TX ... didn't they just call yesterday and I told them the same thing. Hope there is still work when I get there.

When we leave there we drive a couple of miles and go to a Golden Corral. This one is laid out differently than any I've seen before. Didn't have any food that was bad. And I had plenty of it.

From there we drove to another one of the Missions. I tried calling the shop but it just kept ringing and ringing so I gave up. Planned on calling them back in a half hour.

We hadn't done much walking at the first one so at the next one the plan was to walk from one to the next one. We start by looking at the buildings on the way to the path. A place called 'De-Tours' got there about the time we did. Seems to be a place that will take you where ever you want to go and tell you what they know about it.

We found a path but it didn't look right, we took it anyways, brought us just about back where we started and then we found the trail. Still not marked but six foot wide, paved. Wasn't that way closer to the Mission. We get five minutes down the trail and the bus company calls. They can't get a hold of the shop either.

So I try the shop again. I get someone, and they had tried to call the bus company but they didn't have the name of the person who called. So the shop was glad I called. And I was told "We looked at it. The guy we had assigned it to doesn't know anything about how this one is put together. We will have our 'expert' look at it, next week, Tuesday or Wednesday."

So I call the bus company back and relay the message ... and we run threw the timetable. Weds they look at it, Thurs the parts are stilled to them. By the time they get the parts it's the weekend and then Christmas ... if it's OK with dispatch, I can leave the bus.

I call dispatch. He doesn't like to leave a bus sit, but he understands. We have been with this bus for over two weeks. He does tell me the other two are rolling again today. They also have been down for two weeks. They have over 800 miles today, I hope they have better luck than I did.

We check close times for a couple of places and head out. Our first stop is back to get the stuff out of our bus. It is sitting where it was this morning when we drove by. So either they had already looked at it, or they never did pull it in. We grab our stuff and head south. It's about 3:30 so we are ahead of traffic.

At about 5:30 we stop and get fuel and McD's in Kingsville.

Finally at 7:30 we are at the airport in Brownsville. Yes, we are driving eight hours out of our way to pick up a rental car. It will save us about $1,800 on the car, plus better mpg. BB doesn't want to drive at night so we rent the car, and then leave it sit in the airport lot. The rental place doesn't open until 9 AM and we want to leave at 7 AM in order to return the San Antonio car by noon. For a few minutes we thought about spending the weekend in Brownsville, Padre Island but we just want to get out of TX.

So we left our 2nd car and headed to the SureStay. They are still a part of the BestWesterns, but no longer can use those signs ??? The lot is just about empty. 8 PM on a Friday night and there is about 5 cars including ours.

We have the one way car for a week, but only plan on taking three days to get home. There is one truck kind of on the way but not sure we can do a pickup on Saturday. IF I remember, I will call tomorrow before noon. It only adds about 30 miles to the trip and would