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.

Mini-vacation diary, Part the segundo

The day starts early because the ROTC kids are up before 6, banging and thumpin around in the hall. What was that I said about they're not being too annoying?

Still, we laze about -- it is Saturday for heaven's sake. We'd bought some microwave breakfasts instead of partaking of the "continental" breakfast the hotel serves, so I cook. Silly me, I think I can grab some orange juice before we head out for the day, but by the time we're ready to go just before 9, the staff is cleaning up, and the juice has been stowed. I must remember that.

We jump in the Cube, set the GPS for Anderson and take Lisa's directions. From what I'd seen on Google maps, she's taking us by a circuitous route, but that turns out alright when we drive through a seriously ritzy neighborhood. I miss a turn, but it's not really Lisa's fault. She'll guide us straight to the entrance of the Fanthorp Inn State Historical Site in Anderson.

Seems Henry Fanthorp settled in Texas while it was still part of Mexico and persuaded Stephen F. Austin to give him some prime land on a major stagecoach route. His original dwelling was in a corn crib, but after he married, the wife, Rachel, decided she needed nicer quarters to live in.

So Henry built your basic dog-run, then expanded it by adding a second story and dining area to accommodate travelers. Eventually the establishment also became the post office, with Henry as postmaster. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/moconn852/sets/72157626072797979/)

While touring the site, we heard the park guide refer several times to "Washington," meaning Washington on the Brazos to me. Silly me, I didn't know the existing town is called Washington. You live and learn.

We checked a map in the car and discovered that WOTB wasn't far away, so we decided to buzz over and check it out. We programmed Lisa, who once again redeemed herself for Friday's miscues. (I did forget to mention that she tried to lead us astray in Bryan on our way back to the hotel, but we outsmarted her. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I buy a new GPS.)

As we neared the state park, we saw farmers sitting in their fields next to signs offering parking for $5. Why in the world would anyone want to park in their fields? Was something going on? Yep. Seems the park was having a 175th anniversary celebration of the declaration of Texas Independence. We turned into the entrance only to find we were about to join hundreds and hundreds of other visitors.

Guardsmen were on hand to direct traffic, and we were shuttled to an empty field way in the back of the park. But we didn't have to pay five bucks. And because it was a celebration, everything was free. No park admission, not other fees. Huzzah.

Historical re-enactors were scattered about the park grounds, doing demonstrations on just about anything you could imagine. Some demos we've seen previously in other museums and parks. One we hadn't seen was for rope making. The demonstrator invited children to run the hand-cranked apparatus and make 4 to 5 foot lengths of rope they were allowed to keep. That explained why we saw so many kids wandering about with rope.

A crowd had gathered at the replica Independence Hall to witness a re-enactment of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Only problem was that so many folks had crammed into the hall that the "delegates" couldn't get in. I skipped out.

Picked up a couple of interesting tidbits in the visitor center. Seems Anson Jones' life went a bit downhill after the glory days of Texas independence, and he ended up committing suicide. Somehow I missed that story in Texas history class. Ah, well.

The other bit of trivia explained that Tejanos were native born residents -- usually of Mexican or Spanish descent -- while Texians or Texicans were immigrants. You can insert your own undocumented worker comment here.

Jones' home has been moved to a section of the park called Barrington Farm, and functions as a living history center, with demonstrations all the time. We walked and walked until we just couldn't walk any more. With sore feet and achy backs we trekked to our car in the back 40 and gratefully headed for the hotel.

The junior soldiers were gone, and we took time to recover before dinner at McAlister's Deli -- like Jason's, only better. For fun we walked the mall, though there wasn't much to see, except for a couple of really interesting outfits on some teens. Though now I think about it, I don't remember them well enough to describe. Oh, well.

A stop at Starbuck for tea and desert topped off the night, and we retired, tired but happy.

Tomorrow we head back to Calvert, the town that's almost entirely a national historical site.

Mini-vacation diary, Part the primero

Day 1

GPS commercials would lead you to believe that the handy little instruments can deliver you anywhere you want to go.

The navigation aids have been quite a boon to me, a person who make the wrong turn just walking out of his closet. Over the years I've slowly learned not to argue with my GPS, even when I'm convinced it's wrong because I'm almost always the one who's really in error.

So, as we're taking Highway 6 from Waco to Bryan-College Station, I'm fairly confident that I have a straight shot. Imagine my dismay when Lisa (I think that's her name) tells me I have a turn coming. I glance at the map, and it indicates that I'll have to move onto a road to my left that doesn't exist.

We keep traveling and Lisa tells me I need to take the next left and go back to some county road, the sign for which we'd recently passed. I dutifully used the turnaround and returned to the county road, where it was painfully obvious that Lisa and the GPS map were woefully out of date and wrong, wrong, wrong.

We pulled back onto 6 and watched the map as we ran out of road -- or so it seemed -- and were driving across a field. Suddenly Hwy. 6 reappeared on the map, and the Cube icon fairly leaped from the field back to the road.

The purpose of this particular route was to take us to Calvert, which we intended to return to on Sunday, where the Internet had informed me I could by a self-guided driving tour booklet at "any merchant."

We parked "downtown" and proceeded to try to find a merchant who was open to sell us a book. This was more difficult than you'd think for early Friday afternoon. We found a store with a quite friendly owner who gave us a rack card with a map of the historical district and who assured us that was what we were looking for.

The Internet had also informed me that Calvert had a Chamber of Commerce, so we thought we might have better luck going there. Fortunately its location was marked on the rack card so we headed that direction. We soon encountered a second shop owner standing on the sidewalk who quite amiably struck up a conversation. We told him we were going to the chamber office, and he told us not to bother. The chamber had a building, but no one was ever there, he said.

We mentioned that we intended to return to see the historical houses, and he lead us into his shop so he could show us the very booklet the Internet said existed. Unfortunately, he only had the one copy. Did he know where we might obtain one? Why, hmm. Probably if we went back the other way, one particular store would probably be open, and if anyone in town had one, that shop owner would.

Sure enough, when we arrived at the store, the wizened owner was in possession of a number of copies, which she happily sold for $7.50 -- please note that the Internet said the booklets cost $5. Ah, nice to know that even in small-town America, profiteering is alive and well. Supply and demand at work.

Having purchased our precious guide -- which will now be part of my estate, to be handed down to my children, with many hopes they won't fight over it -- we proceeded to Bryan. After we checked in, we decided to visit historical downtown Bryan.

The area is being renovated, probably as a result of a grant, with quite a bit being complete. During our wanderings we find O'Connor and Associates, a law firm whose primary attorney is apparently a fellow named Michael O'Connor (I'll post a picture on Flickr soon.)

We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering about and left just as the post-work traffic seemed to be picking up. Despite the presence of numerous restaurants, we decide to eat at a chain place across from the hotel -- and no, it wasn't a Denny's.

When we returned, we discovered that a large Jr. ROTC group was sharing our accommodations. They thumped an bumped a bit, and took over the breakfast area for a pizza feast, but they weren't really as annoying as they could have been.

Saturday we'll head to Anderson and wind up on a much bigger adventure.

I hope to post Day 2 on the morrow.