The Ritzy Neighborhood - Sat., Jan. 4

Saturday started out on the cool side. Knowing that we'd be doing two Volksmarches, I dressed in jeans and a dark brown sweatshirt. Randolph Roadrunners Volksmarch Club sponsored two walks today. The start point was Corner Bakery Cafe at The Quarry shopping center.

Corner Bakery Cafe - excellent!

At 11:00 a.m. we started on our first walk, a 10K (6.2 miles), through Alamo Heights, a very posh, high-income suburb of San Antonio. We headed north through the shopping mall passing Whole Foods Market, Regal Alamo Quarry Cinemas and quite a few nice places to shop and eat.

Alamo Quarry Mall smokestacks (decorative)

We meandered around one area, past Olmos Park and the dam.

Outdoor tree ornaments.

Olmos Park

As you can see, the sky was sunny and we weren't in the shade for a while. My dark brown sweatshirt was downright hot! Whew.

It wasn't long before we were off the main road and into high-end homes. Here we encountered lots of shade trees. Yay!

The tree is gorgeous and frames the home.

The following photo is of a place called "The Argyle." That's all the sign out front said. Later, back at the 5er, I Googled The Argyle and found it used to be a 1,400 acre horse ranch. Through the years, it had a number of owners, but now is a "club" to which 600 "specially invited guests" belong. The Argyle and its members are dedicated to philanthropy and are major supporters of The Texas Biomedical Research Institute. It's a lovely place we never would have known was there except we walked past it. I wonder if they give tours? I think that's a "no."

Across the street from The Argyle is this gorgeous manse. I love the espaliered plants growing on the side of the house.

Alamo Heights neighborhood street (shade!)

The following four photos are part of the same house. It sits on a corner lot with the angle of the house following the angle of the street. In addition to these photos, at the right of the last photo is a portico where drivers pull in and drop off guests. In the second photo below, notice the espaliered vines growing up the side of the house.

Garages

The left wing of the house with espaliers.

The center section - closest to the street

The right section of the house.

We walked through a large portion of this gorgeous area then moved on to humbler dwellings, like this:

Smaller, but still that Southern charm.

Elementary school

Christmas tree made out of antlers

Our friends Susan and Darren were each working a checkpoint on this walk, so we got to say hi. Thank you, Susan and Darren, for volunteering. We appreciate your dedication.

After we returned to The Corner Bakery, I got my Volksmarch books stamped for both the 10K walk we just finished, and the 6K walk we planned to do after lunch at the bakery. Bob ordered a Trio Salad which meant he got to pick three types of salad to put on his plate. He chose a curry chicken salad, tuna salad, and southwest avocado. I had 1/2 turkey supreme sandwich and a bowl of lentil soup (which Bob and I shared). 

Once our energy was replenished, we headed out on the 6K museum walk, except the 6K didn't go to the Toilet Seat Museum. That was okay, we saw it last year. (See The Seat from the "Throne".) We did take a little detour to look over the edge at The Quarry Golf Course. Yes, there was a quarry here at one time.

Regarding the next two photos...no, I'm not in jail looking out at inmates hammering rocks. We're looking through the fence around The Quarry Golf Course at the golfers down below.

We finished our second walk and headed for home.

On a completely different note...

Interesting survey on The Roadrunner Chronicles blog posted by Randy W. How many of you fix a broken toilet chain on a toilet tank that keeps running? You can zip over to his blog to see some of the answers.

I also have a question for you. When you go into a stall and see a wet toilet seat, what do you do? Leave? Clean it off? Report it to the manager? Use the toilet the same way the last person did, standing up? Other?

One thing I don't understand is, if women don't want to sit to pee for whatever reason, why don't they raise the seat to the UP position? That way if they tinkle when they sprinkle it won't get on the seat! I'm sure most of you have heard the little ditty: "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat." I can't tell you how many wet toilet seats I see! (Although some wet toilets seats ARE from a very strong flush which splashes onto the seat.)

That's it for today. Travel Bug out.