If you go to Texas you have to see the Alamo because, well, it’s the Alamo. So after Padre Island we drove up to Guadalupe River State Park, which is about 45 minutes north of downtown San Antonio, to use as our base camp while exploring San Antonio.
The next day we braved big city traffic (something about living in a city of more than a million makes people drive like maniacs) for our whirlwind tour of downtown San Antonio. First stop was the Alamo. For me, the Alamo significance is as the site of the pivotal scene in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure: “There’s no basement at the Alamo!” At the Alamo we read plaques and peered at exhibits for a few hours (I still don’t understand why they didn’t just retreat and live to fight another day, and why an avoidable military defeat is so renowned). After lunch we put Little Kid on my back and walked the downtown portion of the Riverwalk, a former river turned into a picturesque canal lined with restaurants and shops. The Riverwalk runs below street level, and the streets cross it on bridges, so you can walk through the downtown area without having to cross any streets and without a lot of traffic noise. After the Riverwalk we trudged over to the historic Market Square, which is basically a collection of tourist traps. Finally, we hit the Witte Museuem.
After San Antonio we headed up to McKinney Falls State Park in Austin so we could take the Jetta to an Austin mechanic to have our squeaking front suspension fixed. I found the mechanic on the “trusted mechanics list” of tdiclub.com, the online fan club for the Volkswagen diesel engine (known as the TDI). Once again, the internet makes it easy to live on the road.
While in Austin we swung by the Texas capitol building and got the treat of seeing a young northern tourist make a what-the-heck?! face as she read the Confederate memorial (“DIED for state rights guaranteed under the constitution”). Inside the capitol building Becca was entranced by a cowboy trick roper who was there for the speaker of the house’s private christmas party.
In Austin we also continued our tour of North America’s city parks with a visit to Zilker Park where we walked around Barton Springs, took the little train, and walked the trail that loops along the Lady Bird Lake.