It's a small world after all - Sun., Apr. 3, 2016

Friends of friends are wonderful as we found out on Sunday, April 3. Here's how we met Pam and Tom ... I have a great friend online who lives in upstate New York. We met many years ago on a cat group (Yahoo, I think). Over the years we stayed friends and migrated from Yahoo to Facebook. We keep in touch with each other almost daily via Facebook or our multiple online Scrabble games. Her name is Nicki and I've never had a chance to meet her in person.

On Monday, I received a personal message on Facebook from Nicki telling me that some friends of theirs were in "North Texas" and maybe we'd like to meet them. I explained we are in South Central Texas in San Antonio, so didn't think we were very close to them.

A couple of posts later, Pam chimed in to say they were at Thousand Trails by Medina Lake just outside San Antonio. Well, now, that's a different story. They were darned close!

They mentioned they hadn't spent much time at The Alamo because it was too crowded last time they went. We invited them to meet us at our RV park, take the bus into downtown, go see the Alamo, and have lunch on the River Walk.

So that's what we did. Sunday morning is pretty quiet at The Alamo. We explored the grounds before the movie at 9:45.

Pam and Tom at the Alamo in front of
a huge cactus.

Following are photos of a trumpet flower plant. We had these in Hawaii and of all the trumpet flower plants I've seen, I have NEVER seen one with this many flowers! Holy cow. And look at the size of those flowers. So beautiful.

Trumpet flowers

These plants are profusely blooming right now.

Papaya tree with green fruit (not ripe yet)

The whole papaya tree

In front of the long barracks at the Alamo is a huge live oak tree that was transplanted at the Alamo in 1912. At that time the tree was already 40 years old!

Live Oak Tree at The Alamo

At 9:45 we watched the new movie about the Alamo which was created by the History Channel. Bob and I thought the new movie was way better than the old one. The new version had more of the events that went on in other parts of Texas, all related to the battle at The Alamo.

After the movie, we looked in the gift shop and then took some more photos. We wanted to thank Nicki for introducing us, so Pam and I waved our thanks.

Me and Pam in front of The Alamo

From The Alamo, we walked across the street, down some stairs, and went through the Hyatt Regency's waterfall court on our way to the River Walk where we would have lunch.

Part of the waterfall court

This mama duck had seven ducklings. Aww.

Pam and Tom had never been to the Rainforest Cafe before so we took them there.

Pam and Tom looking over the menu before they opened.

A big snake moves overhead as you wait to get seated.

The elephants move and trumpet about every 15 minutes.

We all found good food on the menu and sat back to enjoy the ambiance. (Ha ha, if you call gorillas roaring, elephants trumpeting and the sound of a rainstorm ambiance.)

A pretty aquarium was within view of our table.

Hello fishy.

Bob and Tom

 One of the waitresses was nice enough to take a photo for us.

Me, Bob, Tom, Pam at Rainforest Cafe.

My tropical shrimp salad with strawberries, mangoes,
grapes, pine nuts, mixed greens, shrimp,
and honey-lime vinaigrette. Mmmm.

After lunch we took a few more photos around the restaurant. Shortly after I took the photo of Tom and the tiger, a little boy walked by, looked up at the tiger and started screaming. Pam stayed a little longer to help comfort the poor tyke.

Great big iguana

Tom face to face with the tiger

We walked back to the bus. Our bus was at the stop so I ran ahead, flagged down the bus who was pulling away, jumped on and asked him to please wait for the other three people. (It would be 1/2 to 1 hour wait for the next bus!) The driver was very nice and even pulled forward so they didn't have to walk as far.

On our bus ride back to the RV park we had to make a long detour because a train was stuck across the tracks. Once back at the RV park, we hopped into the Escape pod and headed to Mission San Jose, "the queen of the missions." There, we watched a totally different film which is told from the viewpoint of the Native Americans. Well worth a watch if you make it to Mission San Jose.

Pam and I at Mission San Jose Convento

Bob at Mission San Jose

Mission San Jose

Mission San Jose

Pam at Mission San Jose

The Rose Window or maybe "Rosa's Window"?

Behind Mission San Jose, outside the back gate, is this mill, the oldest in Texas. 

The Mill

 Once back inside the gates, we walked through the granary.

The granary

Mission San Jose

Entrance gate to Mission San Jose grounds.

We then took them to Mission San Juan where we drove by just to show it to them. Then we parked and walked in to Mission Espada which is the least restored of any of the San Antonio Missions. The Visitor Center was closed today, so we did a short walk and headed back to the RV park.

Pam and Tom have two labs so they needed to head home and let them out of the motorhome. We said our thank you's and see ya laters. It was a very nice day with great weather. We'll keep in touch with Pam and Tom and hopefully see them again "down the road." Thank you, Tom, for buying our lunch. That was very sweet of you.

Thank you, Nicki, for introducing us to Tom and Pam on Facebook. We've made new friends. It's a small, small world.