Week-End Update

As I posted in Friday post, we were going to go to San Antonio on Saturday, as it is a little over 150 mile drive, we got on the road just a couple of minutes after 8:00AM.



I hope this map thing works.  It is my first time using it.

Our first stop on our journey east was a stop at the Kettle Restaurant in Uvalde, Texas; "Tree City, USA".

Then in was on east to San Antonio.  After a little extra driving we were able to find the Alamo.  Much of it is reconstructed, but historically accurate, and there is lot of information about the history of Texas as well as the Alamo itself.  We spent about two hours touring the area, watching a video history and looking at artifacts of the time.  Photography was not allowed inside the buildings, so no inside pics, but we did take a few of the area, including a couple of Ann in front of the Alamo, to compare to one she had taken their when she was 12, and here with her family several years ago.

Here is one of the different flags that have flown over Texas in it's history.

Here is one of a huge live oak growing in the courtyard behind the Alamo.

The next two pictures are of buildings you can see from the courtyard including, I believe it is the public utilities building with the American and Texas flags flying over it, and the sign on Crockett Hotel which is right across the street.

One of the most interesting parts of the tour was in the building which used to be a barracks.  On one of the information panels describing the history of Texas, it stated that when Texas was a part of Mexico, the Mexican government wanted more people to come and settle the area, even giving Americans real good deals on land to come to Texas.   The plan was such a success, after few years, the Mexican government began to worry that with all the Americans in Texas, who brought their cultural values with then,  would feel more allegiance to the USA, than to Mexico.  I thought that was interesting statement in light of the current  discussion of the problem of unlimited illegal immigration into this country from Mexico.

After our time at the Alamo, we were thirsty and hungry.  We found a restaurant called Pat O'Brien's.  The food, drink, and ambiance were good.

Here is a couple of pics of a fountain of water and fire in the patio of the restaurant.

After being refreshed an rested, we headed to Louis Tussad's wax museum up the street. I'm sure it's related to Madame Tussaud's famous wax museum. It was some what interesting, but nothing great says Paul. Ann enjoyed it more.

We took a few pics including W. C. Fields.  His favorite quote of mine is; "I once survived for two weeks on food and water alone".

Then Ann wanted a pic of her and one of her favorite actors, Johnny Depp.

And then there was our President on the White House lawn.

They had an entire floor dedicated to horror and monsters in the basement. We hadn't made it very far and another lady joined us, who was wanted company walking through the scary exhibits. Her kids were upstairs and she was checking it out before letting them walk through. To find the entrance, you had to open the correct of 8 doors to continue through the exhibit. Opening the 7 other doors treated you to all manner of horrific objects: the Fly, body bags, other aliens, dead people, all scary things that Ann loves in haunted houses. Walking past clear body bags with various stumps was a new experience that Ann plans to take back to her favorite haunted houses in Des Moines. Only one thing jumped out at us, but it was plenty to make Ann scream.

After the tour of the wax museum we toured the Ripley's "Believe it or not Museum".  It had some interesting stuff, but I didn't feel there was anything worth taking pictures of. Robert Ripley was quite the collector, two-headed animals, shrunken heads and lots of exhibits of weird things from around the world.

Then it was time for another break, so we walked down to the River Walk, found the Chili's, and had a couple of cocktails, and relaxed for a while.  The plan was to enjoy a canal cruise observing  Christmas lights. The adventure began to find the place that sold tickets to the barge ride on the river.  We had got directions from a couple of people and they were not too clear, and we were unable to find a place to buy tickets.  We walked quite a ways, and not finding the place we asked again, and finally  found one of the three places that sold tickets, only to find the line was about a block long to buy the tickets, and another block long wait to actually get on the barge.  The line went pretty quickly, and there are dozens of boats operating on the water, and the weather was pretty nice, about 60, and no wind.

The ride itself was quite interesting, there were about 30 people per barge and clearly it was a favorite attraction of the masses. It was about a 40 minute guided tour of the buildings and canals we passed and the history of the river walk. Ann highly recommends the attraction if you're in the area at Christmas time. Being it was dark, however, it was not conducive to getting great pictures, but the Christmas lighting was really nice.  Here is a pic that came out ok.

One of the other pics I got was of a restaurant called Rita's.  Couldn't pass up a chance to take a pic like that.

After our river tour and walk back through the throngs of people either eating at one of the dozens of restaurants on the River Walk, and those, like us, who were just passing through, we got back to the car a little before 8:00PM.  We then got directions for the easiest way out of the area to get on Highway 90 East, to begin our 150 mile drive home.  Once on Highway 90, the drive home was pretty uneventful, not much to see in the dark.  The only concern is the same as in Iowa; how many, if any, deer are going to run out in front of you on the way home.  Fortunately, we didn't see any, and we arrived back in the RV Park just before 11:00PM.

I stayed up for about twenty minutes before heading to bed, Ann stayed up a little longer, thus ending another fun and interesting day in our life as Iowa snowbirds.

We read news stories today of the bad weather in Iowa.  We are glad we are not there, except we miss our friends and families, and hope you are all well.

Until next time,

Paul