On The Texas Independence Trail -- San Antonio Missions

We spent Sunday at Sea World. The morning passed fairly comfortably, but the wind died in the afternoon, and even though it only reached 100, the afternoon was pretty hot.

We enjoyed the shows -- especially the clown act at Azul, and of course, Shamu. At one point in the afternoon, we returned to the car, where we'd left a cooler full of drinks and fruit. We sat in the car with the air

conditioner running and recovered, which enabled us to spend pretty much an entire day at the park.

Not much more to say about the park. If you've never been, you should go and have a good time.

Monday marked our return to the quest for Texas history and stamps for our passport.

Beginning in 1718 the Spanish established five missions along the San Antonio river to evangelize the native population. According to a film the National Park Service shows at the main mission, San Jose, their work would fuse two cultures, resulting in a new culture.

Mission San Jose is the oldest and largest of the missions. The walls were fortified to protect against attacks, so you'll see gun turrets and gunports for defense. The outer wall are also where the Indian barracks were located. Each family had two rooms, one with a fireplace.

In the courtyard each barracks was fronted by a water well and community ovens, one for every three or four families. In a lot of ways it reminded us of an apartment complex with community barbecue pits.

The worship area is being restored so we couldn't go inside, but a functioning congregation still meets in the building, as is true of the three other missions open to the public.

The mission houses a large granary and a grist mill. The mill was used to grind wheat and was powered by water diverted from the river. After powering the mill, the water returns to acequias, ditches essentially, that carry it to the fields for irrigation

We stop back in at the main office and ask how to get to the next mission, and the park ranger ac

ts like we're idiots. We have a brochure with a map of locations that also has a bunch of colored lines with no legend that explains what they are. Turns out the dotted line is the one you're supposed to follow. Then she tells us to just follow the brown signs.

Big mistake.

We take off, following the brown signs as instructed and soon come to a turn off to go to the southernmost mission, Espada. My plan is to go to Mission San Juan, then go back to Espada and finish at Mission Conception, the turn-off for which we passed on our way to Mission San Jose.

The only problem is that we became so focused on following the brown signs, we're not paying real close attention to what they say. It's remarkable how similar San Juan and San Jose are. In case that line didn't tip you off, we wound up back where we started. Grr.

We start off following the signs again, only this time we take the turn off to Espada. Espada is the least well preserved of the missions, but the grounds surrounding the chapel are nicely maintained by the friars who run the parish, with some gorgeous flowers. Espada is one of the two missions near the labores, or farms that provided the grain.

We follow the brown signs again, paying close attention to their content and arrive safely at Mission San Juan. The park service provides a hiking trail at this mission to take you to the river, more like a small stream at this point. When you return to the mission, you face what was the main entrance.

This mission is also small compared with Mission San Jose but is better restored or was maintained better than Espada.

Next on our tour was Mission Concepcion, closer to downtown than the other missions. We

follow the brown signs again, and everything seems to be going swimmingly until one of the signs directs us to go a particular direction, and then we run out of brown signs. Soon we find ourselves on the edge of downtown, having completely missed Concepcion.

Using the park map, we start to head back to San Jose and wind up right next to Concepcion. Not too bad.

The church and convent sections of Concepcion are the best preserved of any of the buildings, with some of the original stucco still in existence. You become accustomed to seeing these buildings without the covering they had, in which frescoes had been painted.

If you've ever seen buildings in Mexico with bright, vivid external colors and patterns painted on them, then you have an idea of how these buildings probably looked long ago, not the drab, brown and gray stone structures you see now.

One of the park rangers is talking to a couple as I walk by, but he grabs my arm and tells me how to take a shot of the mission that he thinks it particularly striking. I go line up the way he's instructed and

wind up agreeing that it's a nice shot. You can see sky in all the window of the towers.

After our visit to Concepcion, we eat lunch and head for Gonzales. We are determined to obtain the passport stamp we missed the last time we were there. We roll into town and find the chamber of commerce, located in the old jail, which is also a tourist attraction.

After obtaining the stamp, we walk through the jail building, looking at the cells, which no one in his right mind would want to spend any time in, and viewing the reconstructed gallows. You can walk up on the gallows platform if you want, and I suppose you could even stick your head in the noose, but that seems a bit too creepy for me, and we skip that highlight.

Afterward, we jump in the cube and head for home, sweet home. Someday soon we'll plan a visit to the final sites on the 175th anniversary tour: San Felipe de Austin and the San Jacinto battleground.

On the Texas Independence Trail -- The Adventure Continues

The time came, after too much overtime for Sharon, with more in the future, for a road trip. Take a weekday off, combine it with a weekend, and go in search of fun.

We're still trying to collect all the stamps in our 175th Anniversary passport, so we decide to head for San Antonio, where we can pick up the one for the Alamo and where we can visit the missions again. We'd been to them a couple of decades ago and always wanted to go back.

We'd top the trip off with a run to Gonzales, which we'd visited over the July 4 weekend. We didn't get a stamp there because you have to go to the Chamber of Commerce, which was closed, and we couldn't find anyway.

The summer decided to be freakishly hot, but we were encouraged to hear that a tropical storm was bearing down on Texas, and its path would take it close enough to San Antone to dump some rain and make it cooler during our stay.

Then TS Don came on shore and the Texas heat sucked the life out of it. Still, Internet weather prognosticators said we'd have clouds and somewhat cooler temps, and for the most part, they were correct. They neglected to mention the winds would be light, dying off in the afternoons and evenings, with enough humidity to suck the life out of us.

I determined we should hit the road by 10 a.m. Saturday. We woke too early and ended up leaving a bit after 9. But given my track record for getting lost and having to drive in at least one circle despite owning and using a GPS, I figured we wouldn't actually arrive any earlier.

We didn't wind up making a circle, but we did have to contend with I-35 traffic, which can come to a standstill for no apparent reason and usually does. We arrived at the hotel precisely, or nearly so, at check-in time. After stowing our stuff, we headed for the Alamo.

We parked in a nearby parking garage associated with the River Center mall, thinking it would be easy to return to.

At the Alamo, I forget to take my hat off when we enter the main building. A volunteer catches my eye and quite sternly says, "Sir. Your hat." From his tone you would think I committed some unspeakable act. Then I see the sign that reminds me this is a "shrine" and "hallowed ground."

I know the story, what happened there 175 years ago. Depending on your perspective, the battle was either an amazing sacrifice for freedom, or a preventable waste of good lives. Given my Texas birth, I know which side I'm supposed to be on, but honestly this shrine and holy ground stuff is a bit much.

Only the one area qualifies. The rest of the grounds and buildings can be wandered at will -- with a hat on -- and no one minds, even though Texians and Tejanos died everywhere. Later, in a video, we're told the state Lege passed a law declaring the site to be a shrine. Oh, well. If it's a law.

I behave for the rest of our stay, and then we head for the Riverwalk. We'll spend a couple of hours walking about, grabbing some Mexican food and then head for the car. Now we're in trouble.

We return to street level in the wrong place and don't recognize the surroundings. We have a map and head the direction we think we're supposed to be going, but nothing is familiar. We try a different tack but that's not helpful either.

We stop and sit on a concrete pylon to try to puzzle out from the map where we are, and small, quite inebriated Hispanic woman comes up to us, wanting to know what we're doing. Sharon tells her we're trying how to figure out how to get to the River Center garage, so she calls over her equally inebriated husband, who has prosthetics on both legs and is wheelchair bound.

He gives us directions that almost make sense and asks for money for food. I know he's not going to use the money for food, but I give him a couple of bucks just so the couple will quit bothering us. They shout directions at us as we move off in the indicated direction, but decide not to cut through another parking garage as they've urged us.

Downtown San Antonio is awash with people moving from who knows where to somewhere else. Eventually we spot a gang of bicycle cops hanging out on a corner, chatting or just staring. I walk up to one of the starers and ask how to get to the garage we're looking for.

He tells me to keep going the direction we're headed, and it'll be on our left. Sure enough, we spot the sign in a couple of blocks. Relieved that we've finally arrived and needing to sit and recover from the now oppressive heat and humidity, we head for the tier our car is located on.

Only it's not there.

In fact, the parking spot is not there. We quickly discover there are two parking garages with the same name, and we're in the wrong one. Back to the street.

Once we figure out where the Alamo is, we're in good shape and find the garage. Our first few minutes are spent just sitting, enjoying the air conditioner. The next challenge will be finding the hotel. The GPS has lost its signal, and we don't have a good map. We'll have to exit the garage and drive around a bit until the GPS reacquires.

When it does, it leads us down a busted-up road through an industrial section of town but finally delivers us to a recognizable highway and back to the hotel. Our first adventure is over. We're exhausted and will sleep very well, but we've had a good day.

In Part Two, we'll visit Sea World and the Missions, where we'll have another travel adventure.