Interstate 37 runs north from close to Corpus Christi and is used as a hurricane evacuation route. For the entire length of the north-bound Interstate, they have added a third lane that is used only in the event of a hurricane.
Once we got to San Antonio, first stop was Walmart for some food supplies. We had another friendly encounter here with a local who happened to hear our accents. He stopped us in our tracks to ask where we were from and shook our hands before heading on his way. Shortly afterward, I passed a cowboy dressed up in stetson, boots, spurs, chaps, chequered shirt - the works. Another shopper must have seen me looking at this guy and said ..." I wonder if he left his horse out the front..." Actually, we've noticed a few Cowboy Churches here. Must get a photo of one.
Once we were stocked up, we visited one of the early Spanish missions. The first we visited was Mission San Jose y San Miquel de Aguayo. The San Antonio missions are truly magnificent old (early 1700s) structures, designed to protect those who chose to live there from Indian tribes, disease outbreaks and rough weather.
The missions are still used for Sunday services...
And backdrops for weddings...
There are three other missions in the vicinity of San Antonio and of course the Alamo. Here is the interior of the most originally-preserved one; Mission Nuestra Senora de la Conception de Acuna.
From here we drove out to rural San Antonio to a shooting range. Took a bit of finding but when we got there, the two people behind the counter offered us a choice of pistols, rifles or semi or automatic machine guns to test fire at their range. The woman behind the counter had a pistol in a holster on her waist and the guy had his pistol tucked down his trouser waist-band. Of course we chose the machine guns. Now we had the choice of Sten Guns, AK-47s, M-16s and MP-5s. We chose the fully automatic MP-5, that off-loads its 30 cartridge mag in 6 seconds.
The story is you buy your magazine then head off to the range, where you are given your gun. You then wait for everyone to stop shooting (this is very well controlled) and you walk out and pin your target up. Then await the call to go "hot" and away you go. Everyone stands in line and fires away...
Here, Nige managed to get a shot of me firing the MP-5 with three cases being ejected. Can you see them? If you kept your finger on the trigger, the muzzle got warm pretty quickly and the gun would continue rising with the recoil, making it hard to keep on target. But I somehow managed to get around 25 of the 30 rounds at least on the target card!
Here's Nige's turn...
After all this excitement, it was back to San Antonio to find a hotel and have a look around. We took out hats off to the City - it has got to be one of the cleanest, most attractive cities in the US we've seen. From the lively malls...
...to a very cool river walk through the CBD. This is really worth a visit if you're ever here. Cafes and restaurants line both sides of the river and boats carry tourists around a loop in the river, alongside the river walk. We stopped in at a restaurant called the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Tan - do you remember we visited the same place in 'Vegas? You walk into this place and it's like a jungle. Trees and vines everywhere, large stuffed lions, crocs and elephants that move and roar as you walk past, giving you a hell of a fright and one of those night sky ceilings. The kids would have loved it.
After dinner we continued our walk around the river. Here a group of musicians are playing to a couple (trying to enjoy) eating their meal. Check out the big fella and the huge acoustic bass guitar.
We enjoyed this river walk so much, here are another couple of pictures for you...
San Antonio has a few trolley look-alike buses. Here is one being tailed by a local Smokie.
While we were out, we decided to have a quick look at the Alamo, which was just two or three blocks away. Here it is, just as it was getting dark.
And this is the walk back home, when it was dark...
Not only does this city look great in the daylight; they turn it on at night as well. Many of their downtown buildings are lit, like this one...
That's enough for one day. 1am again, so time to hit the sack. See you tomorrow.
PF
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