Volksmarch - Mission Espada: 1731-1824 - Monday, Jan. 18, 2016

Time to play catch up in blog land. I have been neglectful in writing for a few months. So here goes...

The Mission Reach of the River Walk in San Antonio has three different Volksmarches: two of which start at Mission San Jose. Today we chose to do the walk from Mission San Juan to Mission Espada, the southernmost of San Antonio's five missions. The walk starts out at Mission San Juan so we drive to the start point.

We walk the grounds and walk the Yanaguana Trail behind the mission. Along the trail, we see a portion of the San Antonio River as it looked when the Native Americans lived there. It is much more overgrown and smaller than the tamed portion of the River Walk in its current configuration.

We continue from Mission San Juan to the historic acequia (aqueduct system) Indians used to irrigate crops grown for missions. The old rock work of the acequia is still in pretty good shape.

As we walk along the river, we can be assured we will see bird life in abundance. Today was no exception.

Neotropic cormorants

Great white egret

Snowy egret

Great blue heron

Two osprey fishing

As we head south to Mission Espada, we go under I-410 on the bike path. Just before Mission Espada there is an area of historic markers explaining mission life and Spanish ranching.

 

We also passed a rack of B-cycles, rental bicycles you can ride all over the city and return at any of the other B-cycle racks.

B-cycle rental bikes

Mission Espada is the least restored of the five missions. There are partial walls around the outside edge of where the mission stood. The chapel is the nicest part of this mission. The front entryway has a unique keyhole door, unlike any of the other missions in this area.

Mission Espada Chapel

Keyhole door on the chapel

When we finished looking around Mission Espada, we hoofed it back to our cars, hoping to catch a movie. We were running late. 

When we got to the theater, there was a long line and we said, "Enough." We went to the Mexican restaurant near the theater and had breakfast. Inside the restaurant was an awesome, colorful mural. It's one of the prettiest I've seen.

 

After lunch we each headed home and decided to see the movie another day. It was a gorgeous south Texas day, not a cloud in the sky. 

Travel Bug out.

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.

Footfalls - Monday, January 12, 2015

With today's football talk out of the way, we're going to back up to the beginning of Monday to talk about footfalls, you know, the sound of footsteps. In this case, differing types of footfalls.

Bob was up at 5:30 this morning, as he is every Monday-Wednesday-Friday, to play basketball at Gold's Gym. However, I didn't hear his truck start up. Before long, he was headed back to bed. The truck wouldn't start! We knew it wasn't the batteries because we replaced them in February.

It was too dark for him to check under the hood of his truck, so he figured he might as well get more sleep. Around 7:30 am, he went back out, opened the hood and found a huge nest of leaves on top of his engine. A squirrel skittered out. Wires had been chewed and damaged. Hence, the engine would not start.

Where the nest was situated before Bob removed it

Nest of leaves and small branches thrown on the ground

That squirrel was getting ready to have babies!

His first call was to Good Sam Roadside Assistance since all our vehicles are covered. He explained the situation and was told "acts of nature" are not covered. What? We never knew that! Grumpiness entered the scene.

Next, he called Grande Ford in San Antonio. We would need a tow and the tow truck driver they contract with was currently towing someone in. As soon as the tow truck returned they would have the driver call us, which he did, and arranged to tow Bob's pick up.

Meanwhile, CPS Energy in San Antonio had cherry picker trucks going through the RV park, stopping at their transformers along the way. Bob found out they were removing squirrel nests! (Note: Every so often in the RV park, there's a loud bang and power will go out in part of the park. That sound is usually a squirrel getting zapped by a transformer!)

Around 9:45 a.m., the tow truck arrived to pick up the pick-up. Bob took my car to work.

Peri and I were going to Volksmarch this morning and take my car to the start point. Thankfully, she drove us there. (I should mention they are six sites from us in the RV park.)

We chose to do the Mission San Juan to Mission Espada Volksmarch that Susan, Darren and I had done a few weeks ago. Peri hadn't been on it yet. Susan and Darren chose not to walk this morning as they are in the midst of putting new flooring in one room of their house.

We had a lovely walk that started out in sunshine, but with a chill breeze. We walked the nature trail at Mission San Juan, then headed over the San Antonio River toward Stinson Field airport. We had some trepidation walking past two stray pitbull mixes, so we crossed to the other side of the street where there was a ruin from years ago that used to be part of a small town. The dogs did not come after us.

Chapel at Mission San Juan

An old building lies in ruins.

Another view of the ruins

San Antonio River...not sure what kind of ducks

We passed the south side of Stinson Field airport, then headed to the Espada Aqueduct (acequia). The aqueduct was built when the missions were in use and was used to irrigate their fields.

It's getting colder!

Espada Aqueduct

Water flowing off the aqueduct

Our next stop: Mission Espada. The church at Mission Espada was closed for renovation when Susan, Darren and I were there in December. We had been told it would re-open in time for the holidays. Today, Peri and I went in and checked it out.

Beautifully renovated Mission Espada sanctuary

Peri in front of the unique keyhole door
at Mission Espada Chapel

The cold wind from the north really picked up on our way back to Mission San Juan. It was downright chilly. Along the San Antonio River Trail we saw evidence of wild pigs: earth rooted up. Luckily we did not encounter the pigs! We hustled back to the warm car.

As we drove north, our sunny day was invaded by a marine layer of clouds moving in from the Gulf of Mexico. Bye, bye sunshine.

Both of us were hungry so we chose Magnolia Pancake House as the place to go for lunch. Our meals were very enjoyable. As we walked out to the car from the restaurant, we noticed a definite drop in temperature.

We were happy to return to our respective 5th wheels, turn the heat up, and hunker down.

Travel Bug out.