Jan 16-19

San Antonio, Texas  (7,080 miles/11,328 kms.)

Friday morning was a short drive of about 75 miles from our previous night’s park(aka-Walmart). We had a relaxed start with a breakfast of sausage and eggs and arrived at Traveller’s World RV Resort about 3 miles south of downtown San Antonio about 12:30 pm. After setting up and having lunch we hopped on the bus around 3:30pm heading downtown for the night.

History lesson #1 – San Antonio was founded around a group of missions (5) started in the early 1700’s with 4 of them still active churches holding catholic mass. Spaniards from New Spain (Mexico) travelled here to set up and colonize in their Spanish tradition. At the time the Native Indians roamed the area and they brought them into these missions to convert them to Catholicism. They would be fully converted from their traditional customs, languages, food, dances and beliefs. They were taught Spanish for talking and Latin for worship. I guess as a pun, this was their “mission”!! These missions were for the most part self contained with nearby fruit orchards, ranches for raising livestock, etc..

Where we are parked, it is in the heart of the mission district which is basically an 8 mile park along the San Antonio river. The first mission was the Alamo (Mission San Antonio de Valero) in the downtown core, followed by Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan and Espada. We are 1 mile south of Concepcion and about 1 mile north of San Jose. The city has miles of bike and walking trails and we are right next door to the river trail system linking all this up. They have done a fantastic job in this respect.

Ok, back to Friday afternoon….after a 25 minute bus ride we are in the heart of downtown and immediately embarked on the river walk, one of the big attractions in San Antonio. History lesson #2 – The “river walk” stems from a solution to solve a problem back in the early 1900’s. With the river flowing right through the downtown core, erosion and flooding were a constant problem, so an architect at the time decided that a good solution would be to cement over the miles of aquifers and also develop hotels, restaurants, offices along the route. The cementing wasn’t finally approved until the 1940’s but further development didn’t really take off until the 60’s.Now it is a thriving tourist districts with markets, restaurants, hotels, clubs, etc.. stretching 8 miles. Many of the 8 miles are purely nice walking trails along the river. The interesting part is that all of this (except the high rise hotels) is 20 feet below the city streets.

On our initial walk, we found the San Fernando Cathedral in the Main Plaza. It was the first church that the city of San Antonio started building around. We arrived back at the RV around 8:30 that night.

Saturday, we decided to get the bikes out and tour along the paved (cement) trails along the river heading south to Mission-San Jose – called the “Queen of Missions”. (see pic)  Finally some tourist attractions that where free! All the missions are free. After seeing a short film and touring San Jose, we headed further south to San Juan. Much smaller in all respects, but interesting to see just the same. We had left around mid morning, so it was time to get back to Jazz as it was around 2 o’clock now for some lunch and some sun at the pool. We also had lots more to see in the area, so a bit of brochure reading and planning for Sunday was in order.

Sunday, our first plan was to visit the historic King William District. This was about 4 miles towards downtown on the riverside bike trails. We headed off around 9:30 and within less than a mile discovered that the bike/walk trail had been commandeered that morning for a ½ marathon. The alternate for us was the Mission Trail Parkway, which also landed us on some less than desirable biking roads for short distances. We eventually found the hub of the historic area and obtained some street walking tour maps. History Lesson #3 – King William District…. It is an area established around the turn of the 1900 century, primary by wealthy German immigrants. There are many grandeur homes in the area – see pics, but also a considerable sprinkling of so called cottages – which were much smaller and also more eclectic. In this area we also found and toured the Guenther House and grounds. This family founded and still own and operate the Pioneer/White Wing flours mills beside the house and elsewhere in Texas.

After touring the area for a couple of hours, we retreated back home, now able to use the river bike trail – 4 miles back. The cement trail is marked every 1/10 of a mile. We fried up some hot dogs and onions for lunch and took Jazz for a quick walk to the park. By 2:30 we were back on the bus to finish our “tourists” plans for San Antonio. First off, back in downtown, walk to see the Spanish Governor’s Palace. From the outside, it was a one storey adobe that wasn’t impressive, so we kept the $5 admission charge and headed to the Alamo. History lesson #4 – The battle at the Alamo goes to the root of Texan history – in short they lost the battle as they only had around 200 men to fight against an army of 2,000 Spaniards from New Spain (Mexico). It was a 13 day siege. A few weeks later a much large military was able to defeat the Mexican army, and Texas finally gained its independence. The battle at Alamo was in the spring of 1836. There are lots of history books on it if you want more details. The church (now a shrine) (see pic) and the stockades are all that remains from the original site.

Lastly, before finding a place for libations and dinner, we walked to La Villita – the city’s first artisan district dating back to the 1930’s. Once again, many stores were either not open or vacant. It was a nice looking area, just off the river walk, but sadly no one was there. It was late Sunday afternoon, so maybe that’s why. We went out for a steak dinner (after all we’re in Texas) and were back home to relieve Jazz by 8 pm.

Monday, was a morning to do some research and planning for the next few weeks as we head to south Texas tomorrow morning. Sunning at the pool was in order for the afternoon.

Talk to you soon from the Gulf of Mexico!