Day 19 - Bus tour of San Antonio

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do the tourist thing. Since the Happy Wanderers had already decided to stay an extra day in San Antonio, it came as a happy revelation when one of our fellow campers told us that a certain tour company actually came to the KOA park, picked up anyone who was interested in a conducted tour, and bused you all over San Antonio in search of history and adventure. Sounded like a winner to me.

So it was that bright and early the next morning we were ready and waiting at the KOA office trying not to be deterred by the cold temperatures and the gray, foreboding skies. Minutes later we were on our way downtown riding something that looked a lot like a San Francisco trolley and sort of jostled us around like an antique buckboard. It turned out that we wouldn't be touring San Antonio in our pickup vehicle, something for which I knew I'd be eternally grateful.

The collection point for the tour company was, of all places, right across the street from the Alamo, though we weren't to actually tour that long anticipated location until the afternoon. Once all the tourists from the many downtown hotel collection points had arrived, we discovered that we were to be a group of twenty-six humans and one very funny African American bus driver who never stopped regaling us with tales of old San Antonio even though he was destined to have the lot of us in his charge for the next eight hours.

Our first destination turned out to be a general tour and discussion of some of the city's most interesting historic commercial buildings, churches, and libraries. After that Ron, our driver, deposited us at a convenient access point to San Antonio's downtown canal and we spent a very enjoyable thirty to forty minutes floating through the heart of the river walk area. Because of the incessant wind and the cold temperatures I thought we'd be frozen stiff by the time we got back, but as it turned out everyone had a marvelous time and good ol' Ron had a warm bus waiting for us by the time we got back.

At one point the boat driver asked if anyone knew the movie, "Cloak and Dagger." I was the only one in the boat who raised his hand. "They shot the movie right here in these canal tunnels," she said, and added that I was the first one in a long time who remembered the movie. Not even Concetta remembered the film even though our son Rob had watched it so many times that we both memorized much of the dialogue. You might remember that Dabney Coleman played the imaginary hero, Jack Flack.

After the boat ride we all piled back on the bus and headed for our next surprise, the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum. The Buckhorn was certainly a tourist trap extraordinaire. They had everything from a stuffed Texas longhorn, to a manikin of Teddy Roosevelt. They had a replica of the Bonnie and Clyde car and all kinds of western gee gaws meant to dazzle one and all. But we just adored the place for it's absolutely WONDERFUL Texas Ranger room where you could really acquaint yourself with the history of that august law enforcement outfit. Since we only had about thirty minutes to see the whole museum we found ourselves pretty rushed to see everything and would gladly go back someday to spend more time with the Texas Rangers.

After the Buckhorn the driver talked a bunch of us into coming with him to his favorite Mexican restaurant while a few of the passengers chose to wander off in other directions. So it was that six of us stayed on the bus and ended up at a little hole in the wall place just a couple of blocks from the Alamo. Concetta and I and two other of our bus mates decided to grab a table together and we spent a very pleasurable hour swapping lies and talling tales of the RVing life. These two, John and Laura, haled from north of the Canadian border and had just come from spending an entire winter in Yuma, Arizona. John has more guts than me. I know because he drives a forty-foot Class A and pulls a twenty-foot covered trailer containing his car. That's sixty L-O-N-G feet of moving machinery. I only have thirty feet to ride herd on and I truly wouldn't want twice as much machine to try and maneuver into and out of the Wally World Parking lot, let alone the sometimes narrow spaces in an average RV Park.

After lunch it was time for the ALAMO!!! Now if you're like me, and have been studying the Alamo in school since you were knee high to a grasshopper, your curiosity has been peaked from a very early age. Bucket list or no bucket list, I knew that one day I just had to go and see it. Yes, I know that only a small percentage of the original "fort" exists now. The city has eaten up most of the open ground that was the 1840-era enclosure leaving only the mission-style church building and part of structure they call the "long barracks." But I didn't care. I just had to go and stand on the actual ground, take a few photos, and just commune with history.

The first thing you have to do is wait in this depressingly long line to get into the church proper. But don't worry, the line goes very, very fast. Almost before we had time to snap a few photos we were inside. Now if you wanted to read all the captions to all the various exhibits you'd really have to schedule an entire day. We didn't have that luxury so we had to concentrate and absorbing the essence of the place, inside and out, before good ol' Ron called us back to the bus. The only really disappointing part of our visit to the Alamo was the almost total lack of sunlight. To make good photos you need Mother Nature to cooperate and for our special day in San Antonio Mother Nature was off asleep somewhere. So, we just had to make do with the puny light we had.

After the Alamo we were back on the bus and headed for a whole laundry list of destinations. We saw a Japanese tea garden, two different 18th century missions, and a Mexican style "mercado" where I was fortunate to score a really nice belt of hand-tooled leather and Concetta picked up a nice dress for the new granddaughter. All in all, the day was a tremendous success and we were back in the cozy confines of our Tioga by dinner time. We even had time to run some of our accumulated dirty clothes through the park laundry machine while dinner was cooking. Though I consider the freeway system in San Antonio damn confusing and hair-raising to say the least, I'd still come back and visit again. The KOA in San Antonio is right up there with the finest parks we've ever visited. The attractions are many and well worth seeing (provided the sun is out), and everyone we met was friendly and helpful.

By the way, that's me in the bottom photo encouraging you to, "Keep on Traveling." Cheers!