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1 to 15 January 2012 16 to 31 January 2012
Our trolley package included a second day to ride the trolley.
First stop, the San Fernando Cathedral. For some reason it is closed today!
On the other side of the street, the courthouse. If you notice, the corner towers are not the same. During the drawing of the courthouse, the "fathers" of the city could not agree on what the towers should look like. They all wanted something different. The architect decided to build four different towers. Also, they have a bylaw that forbid any other building to use the same colors of stones to build a building.
Two of the towers.
Next is the Alamo. San Antonio and the Alamo played a very important role in the Texas Revolution in 1835. 32 volunteers resisted to general Santa Anna (Mexican) for 13 days before finally being overrun and killed.
This battle was the turning point for the liberation of Texas from Mexico.
No photo allowed inside the church. It was not as pretty as the one in Mission San José.
A model of the Alamo with the church on the top right and corner.
For us, the Alamo site was OK. We found the missions more interesting and prettier.
Now for an American, it is different for sure.
We were wondering what kind of fruit this was. Well, it is papaya.
Back on the trolley to visit the King William area.
The founder of Pioneer Flour build this house back in 1895.
It turns out there is very little to visit other the small shop and a restaurant
They have this candy house on display. Built with 90 pounds of candy.
The King William area was built in 1840 by German business man. They build very big house.
The business man Edward Steves was a very successful and rich business man and built this house in 1876.
We took the guided tour, no photos allowed. The tour was very good.
The San Antonio river flows just behind the house and lots of ducks on the river.
The area has over 40 big houses from the 1870 to the 1915.
In Texas, you still have some hitching posts for your horse.
A very good day!
Driving north for an hour to get to Frederickburg.
This area is called the "Hills Country".
The trolley driver told us about a ranch that we should visit. It turns out it is the historical site of Lyndon B. Johnson.
So who's that?
L. B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States back in the 1960. This was his private ranch and it became the "Texas White House" during his presidency.
The ranch is a working ranch, but his house has been turned into a historical park and it looks like what it was back in the 60s.
Our guide was just great. He told us about the man behind the president.
Here is his house. Do you remember where we have seen tree TV sets in a living room? The answer a little later.
Do I look like a president? Should I run for office?
The answer for the TV question is, in Graceland, when Elvis Presley saw that a president could watch 3 TVs, he wanted to do the same. Click here for the web page with the 3 TVs in Graceland.
As I have mentioned before, the ranch is a working ranch. Here is a Hereford bull.
Notice how his horns are bent down!
At the age of one and a half, a bull gets 3/4 pounds weights put on the tips of his horns. The reason for this is by gravity the horns bend downward, the bull cannot hurt other bull or cowboys. By the way, this does not hurt the bull in any way.
We continue on to Fredericksburg, a German style village where a lot of German descendant's still live.
We treat ourselves with a German meal in a German restaurant. It sure brought back memories of our time in West Germany between 1985 and 1989. Good meal and good memories in this German decorated restaurant.
A day without actual plan, but it sure turned out fine.
Last day in San Antonio, we just relax and visit the local Flea Market.
We forgot that down south the flea market ends at around noon. Almost empty by the time we get there.
Note: In San Antonio the term "mission" is used to indicate a religious mission. Tomorrow we are heading down to "Mission", the city of Mission, do not confuse...
Conclusion for our visit of San Antonio, we will come back because we think we need at least another week to visit this area.
Tomorrow we go south to the city of Mission.
Thursday
January 19, 2012
Going back south again. This time to the city of Mission for a week.
We took Interstate 37 for the first 100 km and then moved off to secondary highway 281 for the next 265 km.
Cloudy with a +21 C, great weather to travel.
Almost at every ranch entrance you see, they have some kind of "entrance" to the place. We really liked this one.
As I said, we left 37 for 281.
In Three Rivers, there is a dealer for hunting stuff and his got this truck with a telescopic blind. WOW!
In most of southern Texas, even with a big push for no littering, you still see a lot of garbage on the side of the road. Not pretty.
This is not the first time we see this in Texas...
First time we see this, harvesting hay by hand...
Hey! This is where we used to live, Trenton, Ontario, Canada.
In Texas, everything is big...
Here I am at my desk, hard at work...
It was a little windy for traveling, but not too bad.
After 4 hours of driving, here we are at our new home.
Now, no problems finding the campground, but once inside the campground...
We look for a place to park to register, we could not find a place to park or even the office!
We ended up by the dumpster a little ways away. Finally, found the office, we mentioned this to the person at the desk. The answer is, "Just stop anywhere and come in".
What about blocking the road?
Not an issue here!
A very nice campground, more photos later on.
Another lazy day today. After all the sightseeing we did in San Antonio, we need it.
The RV park is mostly permanent trailers or mobile homes. Less than 50% are motorhome, 5th wheel and travel trailers. So like any good park, you need "Golf Carts".
Here is Chevrolet Bel Air 1958 I think.
One of the many cactus in the park.
It is kind of nice to take it easy for a few days and the temperature is much warmer than Port Aransas.
Bike rides, walking and pool time are the order of the day, but first a little trip to Camping World to see what they have that I could buy. Of course we have to wash the car after being pulled behind the motorhome.
Even after such a busy day, we find time to play a few games of Shuffleboard with some of the "locals". The last time we played shuffleboard was in Clearwater, Florida.
Today, we are going to Mexico, at least try to get there...
Either we got bad direction or I miss understood, but by the time we got to the border, we could not find the parking lot to park and walk over to Mexico. We tried another place, but the same results...
We finally gave up and went home without having been to Mexico...
A few days later, after talking to some friends, we learn that we were not at the right place to cross the border...
Just some photos of the park.
A view of the community all and the library.
We spent a lot of time by the pool today...
A nice and easy day with some light shopping.
On our way to shop, a Big Mac meal for only $2.99, got to have that...
One of our stop is this little dollar store by the park. Sure enough, I got into a fender bender.
Here is the story.
I am in the car, listening to music as Michèle is doing some shopping when a full size van drives pretty close to our car and I say out loud "Hey! Watch it you're gonna hit me". Sure enough she does.
A lady of a certain age comes out of the van and says: "I know I hit you, I have insurances". Boy am I mad at the situation, but she sure is upset. Her van had no damage, but here is our car.
For those who know me, a car is just a car. After looking at it closely and talking to Michèle, we tell the lady it is her lucky day. She can walk away and no worries. Looking closely we could see that the paint was all from her van, easy to remove and a few scratches. I do not want my insurance to go up and I am not sure that if I am not at fault if this count as an accident like Alberta.
I will have to check that out once I get back home.
After all that, we spend the rest of the afternoon by the pool reading and having some wine.
Bingo night tonight. It is always a surprise to play bingo at a new park. Some of the rules are different in lots of way to fill the cards. We still had a great time. We were with Denis and (Ginette?) and a friend of them. A great evening.
Here is a professional bingo player.
After bingo, we were talking with Denis and Ginette only to find out that they will be in Las Vegas when we will be there in 4 or 5 weeks. So we make a "date" to meet in Vegas...
Leaving this park in the morning.
Going to the (almost) most southern point in Texas, South Padre Island for a month.
Getting ready to leave Mission. Hook the car to the motorhome and check and make sure the lights are working.
After driving for one hour and half, we are getting very close to South Padre Island.
The two towers you see in the distance are close to our campground.
The bridge from Port Isabel, on the main land, to South Padre Island.
Our destination.
Once set up is done, I have to spray some ant killing stuff because there are a lot of ants here. Setting up the satellite internet.
Next, we went in town to the information center. Inside the info center, they have a sand sculpture on display, a real one.
Lucky us, tonight is bingo night at the campground.
The people of Texas are very proud to be Texan. They even have the state outline on the bingo cards.
Our campsite is very nice and big. We are very close to the beach and we can even hear the waves.
More photos later on.
We took a morning walk on the beach.
In the distance, you can see the two towers.
The water in the gulf is nice, but just a tad too cool to swim in.
In the afternoon, we took a little spin with the car to check out the island.
We wanted to get as far as the road was going to the north.
We did not make it, the road was blocked by a sand bank as in sand blown on the road by the wind.
So we stopped on the side of the road and looked at the beach.
Here, is the road getting "sanded". Here they do not remove snow, they remove sand from the road.
You can drive on the beach, but not close to the town.
This is how fishermen carry their fishing rod back and forth to the beach. It is even legal on the main road.
One of the fishermen did not like the baby hammerhead shark!
A great day doing nothing...
Off to Brownsville, about half an hour from here, to the Flea Markets.
Our first flea market was inside, not nice.
Our second flea market was nowhere to be found. The GPS took us to the right address, but no flea market there!
The third one is the good one. It is big, outside and with lots of used stuff to look at. We really liked that one.
Hummm! I wonder what they sell?
Our campground is a municipal campground, here is the entrance. It is pretty big with almost 600 sites.
A few minutes walk from our site you can watch the sunset.
We even saw the pirate ship cruising around.
Very nice sunset!
The first weekend in February, a kite festival is going to take place here in South Padre Island.
We found the place where people go practice and have fun with kites.
Our pretty big site.
What is the name of that guy in Bay Watch?
Finished the day with a good BBQ.
We phoned Jérémy and Danielle after we got the email telling us that the baby they are going to have is a baby boy. Danielle did mention that she checked out some attractions around South Padre Island and she really liked the pirate ship. We could not resist and took a photo of the pirate ship and email it to her.
A weird day today as far as weather is concerned.
Windy, light rain and very little sun. We still took a walk on the beach.
Often when you have fishermen you also have a blue heron waiting for a hand out from them.
A shrimper coming home.
We have some green stuff around our site, mostly weeds with some grass.
Well, one of the "weed", and I do not know the name, but I call it "sh%t it hurts". They are small little balls, like a green peas, but they have those very hard and sharp needles. Even dried up, they still hurt like hell. If you ride your bike on them, you will get a flat tire. I even think they are alive and they "jump" at you as you walk by.
Tomorrow we start February! In a little over a week from now, Jérémy and Danielle will be with us for 4 days here in South Padre Island.
We can't wait to see them...
Until next time.
Life is good..
January February March April May June July August September October November December
1 to 15 January 2012 16 to 31 January 2012
Monday January 16, 2012
Our trolley package included a second day to ride the trolley.
First stop, the San Fernando Cathedral. For some reason it is closed today!
On the other side of the street, the courthouse. If you notice, the corner towers are not the same. During the drawing of the courthouse, the "fathers" of the city could not agree on what the towers should look like. They all wanted something different. The architect decided to build four different towers. Also, they have a bylaw that forbid any other building to use the same colors of stones to build a building.
Two of the towers.
Next is the Alamo. San Antonio and the Alamo played a very important role in the Texas Revolution in 1835. 32 volunteers resisted to general Santa Anna (Mexican) for 13 days before finally being overrun and killed.
This battle was the turning point for the liberation of Texas from Mexico.
No photo allowed inside the church. It was not as pretty as the one in Mission San José.
A model of the Alamo with the church on the top right and corner.
For us, the Alamo site was OK. We found the missions more interesting and prettier.
Now for an American, it is different for sure.
We were wondering what kind of fruit this was. Well, it is papaya.
Back on the trolley to visit the King William area.
The founder of Pioneer Flour build this house back in 1895.
It turns out there is very little to visit other the small shop and a restaurant
They have this candy house on display. Built with 90 pounds of candy.
The King William area was built in 1840 by German business man. They build very big house.
The business man Edward Steves was a very successful and rich business man and built this house in 1876.
We took the guided tour, no photos allowed. The tour was very good.
The San Antonio river flows just behind the house and lots of ducks on the river.
The area has over 40 big houses from the 1870 to the 1915.
In Texas, you still have some hitching posts for your horse.
A very good day!
Tuesday January 17, 2012
Driving north for an hour to get to Frederickburg.
This area is called the "Hills Country".
The trolley driver told us about a ranch that we should visit. It turns out it is the historical site of Lyndon B. Johnson.
So who's that?
L. B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States back in the 1960. This was his private ranch and it became the "Texas White House" during his presidency.
The ranch is a working ranch, but his house has been turned into a historical park and it looks like what it was back in the 60s.
Our guide was just great. He told us about the man behind the president.
Here is his house. Do you remember where we have seen tree TV sets in a living room? The answer a little later.
Do I look like a president? Should I run for office?
The answer for the TV question is, in Graceland, when Elvis Presley saw that a president could watch 3 TVs, he wanted to do the same. Click here for the web page with the 3 TVs in Graceland.
As I have mentioned before, the ranch is a working ranch. Here is a Hereford bull.
Notice how his horns are bent down!
At the age of one and a half, a bull gets 3/4 pounds weights put on the tips of his horns. The reason for this is by gravity the horns bend downward, the bull cannot hurt other bull or cowboys. By the way, this does not hurt the bull in any way.
We continue on to Fredericksburg, a German style village where a lot of German descendant's still live.
We treat ourselves with a German meal in a German restaurant. It sure brought back memories of our time in West Germany between 1985 and 1989. Good meal and good memories in this German decorated restaurant.
A day without actual plan, but it sure turned out fine.
Wednesday January 18, 2012
Last day in San Antonio, we just relax and visit the local Flea Market.
We forgot that down south the flea market ends at around noon. Almost empty by the time we get there.
Note: In San Antonio the term "mission" is used to indicate a religious mission. Tomorrow we are heading down to "Mission", the city of Mission, do not confuse...
Conclusion for our visit of San Antonio, we will come back because we think we need at least another week to visit this area.
Tomorrow we go south to the city of Mission.
Thursday
January 19, 2012
Going back south again. This time to the city of Mission for a week.
We took Interstate 37 for the first 100 km and then moved off to secondary highway 281 for the next 265 km.
Cloudy with a +21 C, great weather to travel.
Almost at every ranch entrance you see, they have some kind of "entrance" to the place. We really liked this one.
As I said, we left 37 for 281.
In Three Rivers, there is a dealer for hunting stuff and his got this truck with a telescopic blind. WOW!
In most of southern Texas, even with a big push for no littering, you still see a lot of garbage on the side of the road. Not pretty.
This is not the first time we see this in Texas...
First time we see this, harvesting hay by hand...
Hey! This is where we used to live, Trenton, Ontario, Canada.
In Texas, everything is big...
Here I am at my desk, hard at work...
It was a little windy for traveling, but not too bad.
After 4 hours of driving, here we are at our new home.
Now, no problems finding the campground, but once inside the campground...
We look for a place to park to register, we could not find a place to park or even the office!
We ended up by the dumpster a little ways away. Finally, found the office, we mentioned this to the person at the desk. The answer is, "Just stop anywhere and come in".
What about blocking the road?
Not an issue here!
A very nice campground, more photos later on.
Friday January 20, 2012
Another lazy day today. After all the sightseeing we did in San Antonio, we need it.
The RV park is mostly permanent trailers or mobile homes. Less than 50% are motorhome, 5th wheel and travel trailers. So like any good park, you need "Golf Carts".
Here is Chevrolet Bel Air 1958 I think.
One of the many cactus in the park.
It is kind of nice to take it easy for a few days and the temperature is much warmer than Port Aransas.
Saturday, Sunday, January 21 and 22, 2012
Bike rides, walking and pool time are the order of the day, but first a little trip to Camping World to see what they have that I could buy. Of course we have to wash the car after being pulled behind the motorhome.
Even after such a busy day, we find time to play a few games of Shuffleboard with some of the "locals". The last time we played shuffleboard was in Clearwater, Florida.
Monday January 23, 2012
Today, we are going to Mexico, at least try to get there...
Either we got bad direction or I miss understood, but by the time we got to the border, we could not find the parking lot to park and walk over to Mexico. We tried another place, but the same results...
We finally gave up and went home without having been to Mexico...
A few days later, after talking to some friends, we learn that we were not at the right place to cross the border...
Tuesday January 24, 2012
Just some photos of the park.
A view of the community all and the library.
We spent a lot of time by the pool today...
Wednesday January 25, 2012
A nice and easy day with some light shopping.
On our way to shop, a Big Mac meal for only $2.99, got to have that...
One of our stop is this little dollar store by the park. Sure enough, I got into a fender bender.
Here is the story.
I am in the car, listening to music as Michèle is doing some shopping when a full size van drives pretty close to our car and I say out loud "Hey! Watch it you're gonna hit me". Sure enough she does.
A lady of a certain age comes out of the van and says: "I know I hit you, I have insurances". Boy am I mad at the situation, but she sure is upset. Her van had no damage, but here is our car.
For those who know me, a car is just a car. After looking at it closely and talking to Michèle, we tell the lady it is her lucky day. She can walk away and no worries. Looking closely we could see that the paint was all from her van, easy to remove and a few scratches. I do not want my insurance to go up and I am not sure that if I am not at fault if this count as an accident like Alberta.
I will have to check that out once I get back home.
After all that, we spend the rest of the afternoon by the pool reading and having some wine.
Bingo night tonight. It is always a surprise to play bingo at a new park. Some of the rules are different in lots of way to fill the cards. We still had a great time. We were with Denis and (Ginette?) and a friend of them. A great evening.
Here is a professional bingo player.
After bingo, we were talking with Denis and Ginette only to find out that they will be in Las Vegas when we will be there in 4 or 5 weeks. So we make a "date" to meet in Vegas...
Leaving this park in the morning.
Going to the (almost) most southern point in Texas, South Padre Island for a month.
Thursday January 26, 2012
Getting ready to leave Mission. Hook the car to the motorhome and check and make sure the lights are working.
After driving for one hour and half, we are getting very close to South Padre Island.
The two towers you see in the distance are close to our campground.
The bridge from Port Isabel, on the main land, to South Padre Island.
Our destination.
Once set up is done, I have to spray some ant killing stuff because there are a lot of ants here. Setting up the satellite internet.
Next, we went in town to the information center. Inside the info center, they have a sand sculpture on display, a real one.
Lucky us, tonight is bingo night at the campground.
The people of Texas are very proud to be Texan. They even have the state outline on the bingo cards.
Our campsite is very nice and big. We are very close to the beach and we can even hear the waves.
More photos later on.
Friday January 27, 2012
We took a morning walk on the beach.
In the distance, you can see the two towers.
The water in the gulf is nice, but just a tad too cool to swim in.
In the afternoon, we took a little spin with the car to check out the island.
We wanted to get as far as the road was going to the north.
We did not make it, the road was blocked by a sand bank as in sand blown on the road by the wind.
So we stopped on the side of the road and looked at the beach.
Here, is the road getting "sanded". Here they do not remove snow, they remove sand from the road.
You can drive on the beach, but not close to the town.
This is how fishermen carry their fishing rod back and forth to the beach. It is even legal on the main road.
One of the fishermen did not like the baby hammerhead shark!
A great day doing nothing...
Saturday January 28, 2012
Off to Brownsville, about half an hour from here, to the Flea Markets.
Our first flea market was inside, not nice.
Our second flea market was nowhere to be found. The GPS took us to the right address, but no flea market there!
The third one is the good one. It is big, outside and with lots of used stuff to look at. We really liked that one.
Hummm! I wonder what they sell?
Our campground is a municipal campground, here is the entrance. It is pretty big with almost 600 sites.
A few minutes walk from our site you can watch the sunset.
We even saw the pirate ship cruising around.
Very nice sunset!
Sunday January 28, 2012
The first weekend in February, a kite festival is going to take place here in South Padre Island.
We found the place where people go practice and have fun with kites.
Our pretty big site.
What is the name of that guy in Bay Watch?
Finished the day with a good BBQ.
Monday January 30, 2012
We phoned Jérémy and Danielle after we got the email telling us that the baby they are going to have is a baby boy. Danielle did mention that she checked out some attractions around South Padre Island and she really liked the pirate ship. We could not resist and took a photo of the pirate ship and email it to her.
Tuesday January 31, 2012
A weird day today as far as weather is concerned.
Windy, light rain and very little sun. We still took a walk on the beach.
Often when you have fishermen you also have a blue heron waiting for a hand out from them.
A shrimper coming home.
We have some green stuff around our site, mostly weeds with some grass.
Well, one of the "weed", and I do not know the name, but I call it "sh%t it hurts". They are small little balls, like a green peas, but they have those very hard and sharp needles. Even dried up, they still hurt like hell. If you ride your bike on them, you will get a flat tire. I even think they are alive and they "jump" at you as you walk by.
Tomorrow we start February! In a little over a week from now, Jérémy and Danielle will be with us for 4 days here in South Padre Island.
We can't wait to see them...
Until next time.
Life is good..
If you think you have missed an update, just click on the "2012", "2011" or "2010" tab at the top of the page and pick the month you want to read.
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