We had originally planned for our big seven week fall trip to start at the first of October but we decided to leave early to spend time in St. Louis with family and then come home early to vote in the November election. To make sure we could get started as early Saturday morning as possible, we spent Friday night at the San Antonio KOA. Had we opted to spend the night at home Friday night, we wouldn’t have gotten on the road until 8:00 Saturday morning.
Why so early? St. Louis is a two day drive but we taking three days to drive it. We wanted to clear Dallas before the traffic really got ugly. The earlier the better. We planned to stop just over the Oklahoma border and hoped to reach that destination early in the afternoon. We also expected it it rain the entire drive day. We were not disappointed by either rain or Dallas traffic. It turns out, both were awful!
We have stayed in this park before. After a severe storm damaged our roof, we spent a week in this park while the roof was being replaced. During that week, I had the opportunity to walk along the Salado Creek trail, a segment of the San Antonio Parks and Recreation Howard W Peak Greenway Trails System. Looking at the city’s map, it looks like the Salado Creek trail is 80% complete. When completed, hikers and bikers will be able to travel along the creek from the northwest side of the city near Loop 1604 and I-10 past this park and on to near I-410 and I-37 on the southeast side of the city. This is part of an amazing San Antonio urban trail system that gets lots of use.
The first night we ever spent in our (current rig) truck camper was in this park. We thought it was close enough to home that we could easily address any issues that might have come up. We always forget something when we have a new rig so being close to home was quite the convenience.
This KOA is a destination park. It is within a mile of the AT&T Center, an indoor arena where the San Antonio Spurs play. Big name musicians, such as Carrie Underwood, play in the AT&T Center as well.
The park is also within easy driving distance of San Antonio’s downtown area which includes attractions such as the Alamo Dome, River Walk, Tobin Center, San Antonio Missions, The Alamo, and much more.
Many of the sites are shaded by mature pecan trees.
Sites closer to Gembler Road will hear more road noise than sites located away from the office.
The Salado Creek flows under Gembler Road and continues along the eastern border of the park. Large trucks and be heard crossing the bridge day and night. Trains can also be heard but mainly at night after traffic quiets down.
On this particular stay, we were in the furthest row of pull-through spots so it was unusually quiet and near one of the bath houses. Before coming in for the night, I stopped in the bath house to check out the showers.
This shower looked like a keeper. It was clean and in good repair. (The water pressure through the shower head could have been higher.) I used their showers in the morning.
This KOA offers pizzas for dinner at night and also does made to order breakfasts. We had their pizza for dinner. The pizza was relatively inexpensive and decent enough for a quick meal.
By 8:30 in the evening, it started raining hard. At 4:00 AM we received an emergency flash flood warning on our phones. It was still raining cats and dogs at 6:00 AM as we got up and got around. We hitched the Jeep in front of the park office.
It rained nearly the entire 382 miles to our next stop, the Durant/Choctaw Casino KOA outside Durant, Oklahoma.
Hope to see you on the road ahead!
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