Moving on from Sweetwater

We had reservations starting on Saturday at Thousand Trails Medina Lake. It was another "longish" day of driving for us (about 275 miles -- we like to stay under 200 miles of driving in a day) -- so we got a relatively early start. It was easier to get an early start from the Harvest Host as we had not hooked up to any utilities. We had not even put the jacks down -- our parking spot was uphill towards the front of the rig and we were concerned that if we used the jacks to level, we might end up raising the rear drive axle (which has the parking brakes engaged and keeps the rig from rolling) off the ground.

The GPS in Gracie directed us to take I-20 up toward Abilene and then head south on US highways - so we were heading east into the sun. It was a bit concerning when we saw that there were trucks with warning signs alerting us to an accident that had closed the interstate (if there's enough time to get signs out and close the freeway, it must be pretty major). Sure enough, over a rise and around a corner, we saw traffic being diverted off the highway...

... that's right, literally *off* the highway...

... across the grass (or what had been the grass) berm separating the highway from the frontage road. We were glad that a tractor trailer had safely made it before we started across -- it is always a bit scary to take Gracie "off road".

There were a number of vehicles involved... a couple were being loaded onto trucks to carry them away, a couple were still awaiting wreckers to come, I guess...

Traffic was still flowing on the other side of the freeway, although the wrecker was dealing with one of the vehicles in the median.

It is interesting in Texas because most of the highways / interstates have frontage roads that parallel the highway. In towns and cities, businesses are located along the frontage roads. I have seen where highway construction projects have relocated an exit from near a particular cross street to a location 1/2 mile or more away (which causes the GPS's that don't know about the road construction to be saying "take the exit for Main Street in 1/2 mile" when you're just then passing the new, temporary exit for Main Street). This was the first time I had ever seen using the ability to cross the berm as a way to get traffic off the highway due to an accident. I have seen places where it is obvious that a lot of vehicles have "made their own exit" onto the frontage road -- I always thought that was just folks who wanted to be able to get off near a business or their home without having to go through a stoplight on the frontage road -- but maybe it is because there had been an accident and vehicles were directed off the highway in that way.

After a short distance on the frontage road, we came to an entry ramp (a real one, not cross-country across a berm!) to get back onto the highway.

A few miles further, we left I-20 near Abilene, heading roughly south and a little east toward Fredericksburg, TX. The wildflowers were just starting to reach their beautiful peak -- the bluebonnets were pretty in a number of places,

...but what really surprised me were gorgeous arrays of Indian Paintbrush.

There weren't good places to stop to take pictures of the flowers (at least, not in Gracie towing the Jeep), but maybe we'll get to see some when we're out and about in the Jeep at some point!

We got to Thousand Trails Medina Lake in the early afternoon. While there are some full hookup sites, the ranger indicated that it was likely that all the 50A full hookup sites were taken, and we had decided we'd just as soon have a 50A electric/water site in preference to a 30A full hookup. The ranger recommended we head down toward the lake to some sites down there.

I had been concerned about checking in to Thousand Trails on Saturday -- while we had a reservation, that only reserves a camping spot, not necessarily one in which we fit or having the hookups that we would want. However, Thousand Trails Medina Lake is a huge campground - over 380 sites, and, by my rough calculation, over 300 acres. Even at that, it could be filled on a nice weekend in the spring, with people enjoying the lake... if there were a lake...

We got a lakeside site... do you see the lake?

In this picture, you can see across "the lake".

At this time, the lake is only about 3% full. When Dwayne and I were here in December, 2014, it was also only about 3% full. However, amazingly, it was evidently full in July, 2019.

I found some information about the lake here: https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/medina.html

It would be interesting to be here when the lake is also in residence!