Remember the Alamo!

On Saturday (1/26), we got up at about 8 am and headed out to downtown San Antonio to see the Alamo. We walked to the Alamo and started exploring the grounds. In the buildings, there were exhibits of the certain equipment (musket locks, artillery shells, silver spoons, etc.) and little placards beside them in a glass case. In the gift shop there was a miniature replica showing the battle of the Alamo, including the explosions of the shells (constructed of cotton balls) and the little plumes of smoke from the rifles and muskets (trimmed down cotton balls).

Then we heard about the cattle drive that recreates the cattle drives that cowboys made from the plains into the city by the Chisolm trail. There were five horses, followed by about fifty longhorns going at a quick trot, followed then by another five horses. There were about ten horses at the rear, their riders carrying flags.

Next, we walked down by the old canals now known as “River Walk.” We ate at a barbeque place down there. I got the beef ribs while Joe got a pork. After we ate, we walked along the bank (300 people fall into the canal every year!) before we climbed the stairs back up to the road.

We walked a couple of blocks to get to the Market Square, sort of a series of outdoor shops (it kinda felt like we were in Mexico; we’ve been to Tijuana and know what it feels like). We went into the building in the middle of Market Square to see the stores in there. One interesting thing in there was paintings of people’s that if you look closely, you could see that there were people in the faces. Other than that there wasn’t much other than cheap souvenirs, so we came back out and found a woman selling wooden toys. I didn’t buy it, but my favorite of her selection was a rubber band Gatling gun. You would pull on a knob attached to a string to spin the barrels and shoot rubber bands at a machine gun rate of fire (each barrel had two bands, so when the string came round again it would fire off another volley). Joe bought a wood yo-yo with the Texas flag in its center and San Antonio, Texas in a fun font on the edge. She customized it for him by putting the name Joseph in the same font. Joe used to have yo-yos, but he fell out of practice. He soon picked it back up, though.

After wandering about a bit more, we found the truck and drove off back to the RV park. It was a really fun day. (Blogged by Daniel)