Day 155 - San Antonio & Texas Hill Country
We visited a ranch area north of San Antonio, the German immigrant town of Boerne, and the San Antonio River Walk (at night!)
02.03.2008 - 02.03.2008
While we've enjoyed just visiting my sister, Becky, and her family - she also wanted to make sure we got to see some of the area around San Antonio that she really loves. So this morning, we decided to head up to a small town they liked. First however, everybody got charged up with some good old Seattle refreshments!
Becky and Raul took us through some of the Texas Hill Country to the north of San Antonio. If you want to know what she considers the ideal lifestyle, check this out. We even managed to find a longhorn (cattle, that is, Texas style)
Then we drove to the town of Boerne which was largely settled by German immigrants in the mid 1800's and still retains some of that flavor. The town is on the Cibolo Creek, which has been dammed up to make a nifty duck pond. Of course, this was probably done originally to power a mill or something, but today it's just a pond. And once again, my birding fails me - if someone knows what kind of duck this is, please post a comment and let us know?
The downtown area was just around the corner from Cibolo Creek. It looks fairly typical for small towns we've seen in this part of Texas (as well as elsewhere).
One thing that's a little different is that some of the buildings have 'Historical Marker' signs out front. This one is identified as the Staffel Store, founded by August and Bertha Staffel who immigrated from Germany in 1852.
We had lunch in Boerne in a little place called the "Bear Moon Bakery & Cafe", which was quite good, then headed back to my sister's place. Becky had to run some errands and Raul was feeling a little under the weather (Cedar Fever?), so Mom and I relaxed in the RV for a bit (I got some work done on the blog I think?).
Later, Becky really wanted to take us to the San Antonio River Walk. Both Mom & I had seen this before, but it had been many, many years ago - long before the age of blogging. So off we went, it was already pretty late but fortunately I didn't have to drive (San Antonio streets are complicated).
We got to the River Walk Mall after dark and proceded down to the water level. A music vendor was playing some of the CD's his group produced and Mom really liked it, so Becky bought her a CD. We'll play this during our trip as we drive - along with all the CD's we brought along and have already purchased on the trip.
We also took a few pictures by the water. It was pretty dark so many of the pictures I took didn't come out very well, but I got a few.
Becky found out that the river boat cruises were still running, even though it was dark! She treated us to a cruise down the river with our guide, John.
John was quite a cut up, but also very knowledgable. He pointed out a lot of interesting tidbits about the hotels and restaurants along the cruise as well as some of the history of the River Walk. Of course, it was too dark to take pictures and we were sitting in a tour boat, so some of the pictures I did get have people's heads in them (or parts of heads). Ugh. There are a couple I could use however, which might give you some idea of the types of things we saw on the cruise. Here is the river entrance to the Aztec Theater, then also a tree that is growing from the side of a building, quite odd.
Finally, once we were done cruising the San Antonio River, Becky took us to one of her favorite restaurants in San Antonio (or the favorite) - Mi Tierra Cafe, which also has the famed (?) Mariachi Bar.
We were all resolved to just eat a light snack, but somehow ended up ordering full meals and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. The restaurant is decorated with lots of lights and Mexican brick-a-brack, very well done. We all enjoyed ourselves.
I guess we enjoyed ourselves a little too much since we didn't get home until 11:30 PM! (If you were wondering why I didn't get the blog done last night?) Even so, I stayed up a few more minutes to get the skinny on the Superbowl (I seem to be the only one curious from this part of the family - looks like it was a good one.) We're planning to head out tomorrow morning, so I needed to try to get some sleep.
Logistics:
Miles Driven - 0 (still visiting my Sister's family)
Camped at - my sister's house in San Antonio
Posted by jl98584 21:33 Archived in USA Tagged family_travel Comments (5)