Tuesday October 16, 2018. San Antonio

Boy, it sure has rained here a LOT.  Rain and wind and more rain. No lightning, so that's nice.

Ella took a day off school to run around with the old folks today. We (Damian, Tandy, Ella, Pam, me and Mike) drove past schools, and through school (CAMPUS) parking lots. Lexi's Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson High School is enormous.  Over 3,000 students and spread all over hill sides.  Band and Football.  And more Band.  And more football.  Ella will be going to Braeden's Junior High next year.  And even Ella's elementary school is very large and new looking, perched on a hillside.  There are a lot of hills in this area, too. It's not flat.  This area is called "The canyons", and even though they are not big hills, it does impede how far you can see. That and the trees, clouds and rain and mist this week.

We drove to the downtown area to see where Damian has worked in years past. The downtown San Antonio and nearby areas is a medical area. Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian hospitals, plus the VA and University of Texas medical schools and hospitals. And more.  We meandered through the area, driving through the different parking lots and such.

One of the common tourist areas is a set of boots by the mall.

Tandy taking our photo by the boots

Cute 10 year old Ella (almost 11), along for the ride.

Mike and Damian.

After the mall, and we didn't do any shoppin or anything, just drove by to take the photos, we drove to another area of town to find a very poplular barbeque spot that is near the zoo.  Texas barbeque is essentially smoking the meat, I believe. It was very good.  It was a LOT of food! The place was Auggie's, I believe. And it has a huge pink pig, they have a traveling bus and end up at tailgate parties, etc. They are quite popular.

You should have seen the size of the plate of meat that Ella got!  Of course, she didn't end up eating it. She ate the bread and we brought the meat home. She is an incredibly picky eater, but she's the only one.  The rest of us ate like, um, little piggies? I had a pulled pork sandwich.

Then we headed over to The Alamo.  We walked through the compound, I bought a magnet in the gift shop. It's a really nice memorial. There was an "Autry" on the list of "heroes" that were named on the plaques inside the sanctuary.  They have lots of other museum exhibits about the settlement of this area of Texas.  I kind of snooze through history lessons, it's still not straight in my brain (Spanish, Mexican, Texan, Indian, German...even French), but I enjoyed seeing the artifacts and the renditions of life during those periods.  It was a rough life, I think.  All pioneering things are. Here are some photos of our meanderings though the Alamo compound. 

I loved these huge Live Oak Trees that were throughout the compound.  Their branches were so low they touched the ground in areas.  They had lights strung all around them, but were not lit (and it was daytime, anyway...but I'm guessing it is really pretty in the dark!)

And, yes. It was cold.  I think in the high 40's, breezy, damp and sprinkl-y on occasion. Overcast.  Cold.  We wore our jackets and Ella wore a blanket, too.

This pretty courtyard area had another of the live oak trees, plus a pretty fountain.

Mike noticed there was a lizard on the fountain's center piece. The lizard's tail is in the water. brrrr. Tandy pointed out that they are cold-blooded creatures and it was odd that it would WANT to be in the water!

After we were done "Remembering the Alamo," we did the River Walk boat tour. It's a 35 minute narrated boat ride and Mike and I really enjoyed it. It is a lovely area and the tour was informative about how they manage flooding, some of the history of the area, etc.  I didn't realize the river itself started just a short distance from the city at a spring. I figured it flowed to the ocean from there, as most rivers do, but I figured it started farther away and San Antonio was somewhere in the middle. Not so.  Anyway, it was very enjoyable and I saw interesting architecture and learned some new things. Pictures below.

Waiting in the line to get aboard.

a successfull (?) selfie?

Many of the trees are very old cypress trees. Hundreds of years old.

Some parts of the river are shallow, and originally in the settlement, cattle was a big deal.  This is the "crossing" area where it was shallow and they herded their cattle across at this poing.  There are museums along the river, but mostly it seems to be restaurants.

Ella and Damian.

Mike and (Ella? A pink and green blob?)

What our boat looked like. They are new ELECTRIC boats.

Another, closer, view of the river crossing with cattle. It's a lovely bronze sculpture.

Sunday October 14, 2018 and Monday 15th In San Antonio

Even after a long drive across the state, we did manage to get to bed fairly early because church is at 9 am in their ward.

Tandy is the Primary President and next week is the annual program, so this week was the big practice. But first was Sacrament meeting. A return missionary couple spoke.  The brother is actually from Cedar City. They had served in Peru in a temple. I really liked their talks. Hers was very very long, Sunday School was nice, as was Relief Society.  Pam decided to go to Primary with Tandy.

After church, we kind of snacked and napped around, but Tandy did make a great dinner later in the evening. We had some salmon and rice and veggies.

I have realized that Sundays are rare days when the kids are actually home.  We played Nerts with Ella and a neighbor kid, we read and relaxed.

But once the week begins, the kids are long gone. It rained all night, and the wind blew and howled all night.  Rained all day.  The kids leave early and come home late. Damian and Tandy left during the day to go to Home Depot to get a light fixture replacement. A week or so ago, lightning struck their home and ruined some of their fixtures and things.  They also got some groceries while out.  Mike and Pam and I just lounged around and read and napped. Rainy, lazy day. LOTS of rain.

Dinner was stuffed peppers with everyone but Lexi. She came home later after Band practice. Braeden is later home from school because of football practice.  Ella is the first one home and she helped Tandy make some bread, so that was nice to go with dinner. Fresh French bread. Yum.

And I started another audio book, but on my own.  Another Josi Kilpack book, but a "proper romance" not a culinary mystery.  It's fun so far.  But I'm sitting around just listening with one earphone plug in my ear and missing a lot of the stuff going on around me.  I actually exercised a bit, too.

It's cold, like about 50 degrees, but Damian and Tandy's  home is very comfortable inside. Large, beautifully decorated (now for Halloween), furnished comfortably, tons of food and we are more than well-fed.  They work so hard to keep these kids active and involved and generous with friends and neighbors. and well-fed, even though sometimes they dare to be picky eaters. ha.  I'm so glad I didn't have to raise picky eaters.

Face-off in the kitchen.  The homemade french bread was lovely.

Pam brought her grandkids a Halloween treat. Cute glow-in-the-dark skeletons and some candy and pencils and money (instead of a t-shirt).

Ella (and Tandy) eat raw bread dough. :-[

The lovely entry way. It's so big!  Wooden floors throughout on the ground floor, carpeting upstairs.

Rain actually ran down the street in sheets. Wow.

We spent the first night in Lexi's room.  She has these very very well worn copies of the Harry Potter stories. Does a Library grandma's heart proud.

The kitchen. Marble countertops, fun light fixtures.

We moved from Lexi's room to Braeden's room the next night. Damian and Tandy had another house guest that first Sunday. Dan from Albuquerque that they knew in Guam.  But when he vacated and went home on Sunday after church, it freed up that room. They do have plenty of room.  Family room, living room/parlor, kitchen/dining area, half bath, one master suite and an office on ground floor; 3 bedrooms, loft room and craft room plus 2 full baths and attic storage upstairs.

So far, the rain has been the beginning of a relaxing vacation, but tomorrow we will venture out, see some sights and watch a football game with Braeden. :-)

San Antonio, Here We Com

We headed out to Texas on Friday, October 12, 2018 in the morning about 9:30.  I had to go open the library at 7 am, and work for about an hour and a half;  Pam had to work in the Cedar City Temple Baptistry for her Friday morning shift, but then we hit the road.

Mike is a driving machine.  When he drives to Canada to go fishing, and he's done it twice, he drives mostly the whole way.  So he did drive most of the way to Albuquerque, which was our first goal. It's about half way to San Antonio.  Only it happened to be the Hot Air balloon festival that weekend, so there were NO [affordable] hotel rooms available on Friday night in the city or just outside the city.  So I made a reservation for a little town after Albuquerque called Soccoro. It was quite a bit more affordable to us (we needed 2 rooms, remember), and never are the prices you pay the nice low ones advertised on the internet.

I had planned a route the night previous using Google Maps on our home computer and printed out all the directions to get there.  There are MANY roads to take you to Texas.  Google Maps generally picks the shortest.  Mike figured out how to use his truck's GPS and he'd programmed in the address of Damian's house in San Antonio.  Only there were so many conflicts between the two.  AND our two atlases that we'd brought. Crazy. One smart phone (that I didn't use), two paper atlases, one GPS. And we still couldn't decide whether or not to turn left or right at Fredonia!!  Plus, there was a huge oversized thing slowing traffic along US 89 for miles and miles, so we didn't want to follow it, where ever it was heading.  We wanted a different route than it!  So the decisions begin.  I could not read my printed maps, unfortunately, the size was way too small. I could read it on the atlas (our bigger one; the smaller one Berenice gave us was newer), but I could not just believe the GPS because I'd never used it, it was programmed for something different than what I'd put into my Google Maps search.  Sheesh.  I've never been so conflicted in my navigating before. And, despite having "Directile Disfuntion," I'm a pretty good map navigator!! But do we want to drive through reservations, or do we want freeway?  We hadn't made those decisions together before we got on the road. Mike wanted to just follow his GPS. I wanted the Google Map path.

Mike's big red pickup is comfy. It has a large gas tank. Like 30 gallons big!  So Mike figured we could easily make it to Albuquerque.  Only we weren't going to Albuquerque. We were going to Soccoro, NM to where our hotel was.  And the freeway didn't go straight there. His truck also has the feature that tells you how many miles are left in the tank, according to present road driving conditions.  The GPS was telling us "so many miles to" so I guess Mike re-programmed in the hotel address into it at one potty stop.  We decided NOT to stop for Lunch anywhere along the way because we had plenty of snacks and drinks and had finally decided on a pleasant audio book to listen to that wouldn't put the driver to sleep.  And on we drove, toward Albuquerque, but not quite.

So on we drove. And Drove. And DROVE.  The freeway told us (or maybe it was a map...I don't remember) to turn off on a certain highway to head down to Soccoro...and the same highway we would need the next day for our trip.  And the gas was getting kind of iffy.  We wandered around very barren hillsides and plains on this cut-off highway. It was paved. It was VERY barren and deserted. No towns, no gas stations, no people.  It was getting darker. The tank was emptier.  And we were praying harder.  Would we make it to a gas station before we ran out?  Would the intersection that we would end up at actually have a gas station?  Or would it just be an on ramp?  We were sweating. I was driving. I slowed to 60 mph [because that's what the speed limit was] and we kept praying silently to ourselves.  For a tailwind, good mileage. For there to be a gas station where we needed it. For the gas to last... It was getting so close. Was the dashboard right?  Would we really make it????

Well, we did.  We filled up at the first station we came to in Los Lunas, NM.  The truck took 31.9 gallons. It was thirsty, and prayers were answered. We all breathed easier, and we had a nice fast food dinner at Carl's Jr.  Less than an hour down the road was our Motel. We got checked in and had a decent night's sleep.

On the road again on Saturday morning!  We left Soccoro and headed toward Roswell, NM. It was supposed to be an easy turn from Roswell to highway 285 that would take us to Carlsbad.  We had decided that Carlsbad Caverns would be our one "fun" stop of the long drive. It would be something to break it up a little bit and Mike nor Pam had been there before. I may as well have not, since I was about 6 years old when I did go.  I'm pretty sure the visitor's center, the trails, the brochure, gift shop and trails have changed a bit since then. Maybe not the formations.  Once we got to Roswell, we decided to get a little more gas and use the potty.

I forgot to mention that when we stopped for Mike to use a bathroom in Fredonia, AZ, (Pam and I just stretched), a huge spider dropped down from the door way right in front of him as he entered!  Yikes. Better him than me. I would have really screamed. He did not. He just smashed it and went, "Wow. That was a huge spider."    Well, in Roswell at the gas station, we had a similar experience. The women's was closed, so Pam and I guarded the door for each other in this gas station bathroom:

Spiders, spiders everywhere!  But on a much safer basis. ;-)  'Tis the season.

In Roswell, it's always the season for Aliens. So here are a few:

The alien is the green one.

This was the closest thing to a UFO we could find.  Driving into town, from a distance, and standing above the rest of the buildings, the top of this grain elevator did look rather UFO-ish.

The fields surrounding Roswell are quite green. There are many MANY pecan orchards AND there are cotton fields!  It reminded me a lot of Georgia. 

Below: Cotton!

Leaving Roswell, it was supposed to be easy to find the next highway, but it was not so. We were abducted by Aliens and taken to some strange point out away from town, in the midst of the fields, where we had to ask directions and get ourselves through backroads in the fields (some un-paved) to find the main highway to Carlsbad town and then to the caverns.  But eventually we found our way to Carlsbad. 

Once IN Carlsbad, the town, you'd think, especially with all our navigational equipment and resources, that we'd just breeze on through and drive right there. Not so. We circled through town trying to find the correct way to the caverns.  There was such UNCLEAR and ambiguous signage that we circled through a number of times, tried to get the GPS re-programed, consulted maps....so weird. I mean, we're talking a major National Park here!  There should have been signs everywhere, "This way to Carlsbad Caverns."  Nope. None.  The highway number we wanted went EAST on the north end of town when we first saw the highway signs.  But it didn't go WEST, and that's the way we needed to go (southwest, technically).  We were so frustrated.   The westbound one was eventually found, but it was WAY way on the other end of town.  Sheesh.  Lost twice in two hours.  But we had gas!  And snacks. And full tummies, had had a good breakfast...we were okay. It was an adventure.  

But why such poor signage in Carlsbad, NM?  For example, we were looking for hwy 62/180. It goes to "Whites City" and the caverns, south and west.  Hwy 285 is the way we came into Carlsbad and it continues on through on to Loving, south and east. Loving, NM is NOT on the road to the caverns!  Yet the only directional signage was saw was "Caverns, Loving" with an arrow pointing straight ahead. No numbers of highways to let us know that we had the right way. I didn't want to go to Loving.  That made no sense to me. On my maps, the roads didn't really fork, we couldn't see on the    GPS what we needed to.  It was truly an exercise in frustration.  Where was the road we needed and why in the dickens was it so difficult to find it??? Like I said, we have never had such navigational challenges. Ever.  Well, maybe in Romania. ha.

Lost. Yes. Even with a map.  Two Maps. Three maps. It didn't matter. Just give me good signage, please.

On to the caverns. We got there. It's a lovely National Park.  We loaded our truck bed contents into the cab of the truck, went in for our potty stop, got our ticket to enter the cavern and we walked through the "shortcut" trail through the cavern. In the Cavern:

Heading out of Carlsbad, we ended up on another, um, conflicting...set of messages from my Google Maps map and instructions and Mike's truck's GPS instructions to get to Damian and Tandy's house. I mean, from Carlsbad Caverns National Park, there are LOTS of ways to get to San Antonio. My map said go south and to the highway. His said go north and to the highway. We went his way after Mike swerved off the road to re-consult maps and my protests, but went his way. It was a rutted dirt road through fields.  Mine would have been three miles more, but on paved roads.  Ugh.  Next time we do this, we will fly to Texas. ha.  And only bring one set of directions. Period.

The rest was smooth sailing for the most part.  We drove through huge and very busy old fields in Pecos and Fort Stockton areas of Texas.  Trucks everywhere.  Lines of traffic full of oil tanker trucks on two lane highways. Pickup trucks were the ONLY vehicles we saw along the way.  Lots of trucks. "Lets Go Trucks."  One of  Damian's favorite books as a little child.  I tried to buy one once, just for kicks. Did you know that those Little Golden Books can get quite pricey?

We were enjoying listening to Dean Hughes "Children of the Promise" volume one and started on volume 2.  We stopped at a rest area to rest, stretch and use the potty, switch drivers.  We were on freeway now, it's not terribly crowded and the hills are increasing.  This time we didn't wait too long to get gas, but I'm glad Mike was monitoring the gas as I was not. We stopped off the freeway at some place outside of San Antonio a ways and then...well, we got a bit turned around trying to find their home, too. But this time the GPS unit did work well. We only drove by their house twice before actually getting to the driveway.  When you "Google" their house, there's no way of really seeing how much of a hill they are on!  We knew it was on a corner.  House numbers are hard to find in the dark, even though they left lights on.

Everyone was home and up and we were there by about 11 pm on Saturday night.  Healthy, whole, stuffed with junk food, tired, tired butts.  But there!  YAY!

Really. I think we'll fly next time. That's a long drive.  And we do it all again in a week or so.. .. ..
:-\

Fall and Logan is TWO!

Nova S. Blair said:

"October's poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter."

I love that. It fits. Just change "poplar" to "aspen" and you have what we saw Monday at Woods Ranch.

For Family Home Evening, we went with the Hunter's, played horse shoes, grilled some hot dogs, ate, and then we went to the play, "The Foreigner." It was funny, and really good. The USF did a performance just for SUU employees that night.

We knew it wad going to be a good one on our way home from Salt Lake on Sunday evening. It did not disappoint. September 30, 2018.

We stopped briefly in Provo on the way home to see Robert and family. We only missed Amanda's family.

But what we really went to Salt Lake for was Logan's second birthday. He is such a little cutie.

Opening presents

Donna and Gail dropped by briefly. They were in Salt Lake for a scrapbook retreat.

Rachel is a good helper when it comes to opening gifts. She's had more experience😉

Logan loved all the cars and trucks he received.

And the final present was a big surprise! Nick and Kaylee are having another baby!!
Yaaayyy! An even dozen grandkids next spring.