Remember the Alamo, we did, again

The classic Alamo entrance

Here’s a surprise, more rain here in San Antonio overnight. The drought, it was announced tonight is officially over, and it just took three weeks of our visit to accomplish that. We were glad to help. That said, today turned out to be a beautiful one with plenty of sunshine this afternoon after the rain clouds cleared out.

The park folks take very good care of this place and are cleaning seven days a week. Lately, one guy has spent most of his time drying up large puddles of water after each rain.

(At the end of this blog post scroll down to another post for additional photos from today.)

With the temperatures warming, we turned off the heater for the first time in two days this morning. I also got in a good workout in the recreation center this morning. I’ll probably jinx myself for the rest of our stay, but the park only has three showers (they are very nice) but as of today I have never had to wait for one, which is unusual in a park of this size.

IMAX movie

Just for fun, we took the city bus back to downtown San Antonio today. When Jan and Norm went with us to the IMAX movie last week the people there told us if we came back within a week our ticket stubs would get us a half priced movie. So we headed back to the IMAX Theater to see the 3D movie “Born to be Free” a documentary on the efforts of two women, in two different parts of the world to save animals.

One woman has spent her life rescuing orphaned elephants, many the result of poachers and the other woman has raised orangutans in Borneo that were displaced by human development.

Joan pronounced the movie a great success and at times with the 3D effect it felt like the orangutans would sitting in your lap or that you could reach out and touch an elephant. It was heart warming to see the work these two women have done in saving these animals.

Glasses model

Besides those 3D glasses make a wonderful fashion statement, don’t you think?

With warmer temperatures today we decided to walk back through the Alamo courtyard and visit some of the artifacts we previously missed. I love old cannon and there are several of them in the courtyard.

We also sat in the old barracks, part of the original fort, and watched short film on the siege of the Alamo. Much of the information was the same as we saw in the IMAX movie, but we were actually sitting in a room where the docent told us was the place where many of the Alamo defenders made their last stand as the Mexican army moved across the fort.

I'm a rebel

Joan stopped at a wine tasting shop and sampled some Florida fruit wines that they had on sale. We left without buying any at this time. They did have a Texas wine “Texas Kick Butt Cab” a locally produced Cabernet, that we may purchase when we come back to town in a week or so with Joan’s sister and brother-in-law. (We didn’t want to carry a bottle of wine on the city bus back to the campground.)

We caught a city bus back to the campground with enough time so we could attend the RV park’s Monday night potluck dinner.

Just to prove it was a nice day

Joan made her special Tuna “surprise” casserole which was a big hit at the dinner. We did leave with enough for one more meal here in the trailer. Tomorrow night is the Valentine’s Party dinner which we signed up for last week. We have met a lot of nice people, including a former Air Force veteran who was a general aviation pilot like my father.

Richard and his wife, Joan, live in Montana, and he has restored and owned a couple antique Piper Cubs, one of which he sold to a guy named Jim Smith, a wealthy airplane collector in Montana.

Potluck gathering

Potluck offerings

They are both coming to the Valentine’s Dinner tomorrow night so we hope to spend more time with them there. This is their first year of traveling with an RV so it was fun to exchange stories with them.

Tomorrow we’re going to make a short trip to another of the local missions in the afternoon, but I’ll write more about that tomorrow night.

One new park license plate today: Nova Scotia. I think we have seen nearly ever Canadian Province in the park since we have been here.