San Antonio and Austin Texas
We hope you all are healthy and surviving these strange times we are living in. We are doing great and feel social distancing is easily accomplished in wide open campgrounds.
On March 1 we moved camp up the road to San Antonio leaving the coast and birding to explore here and in Austin. Last year we briefly visited the area and decided we need to come back and spend more time. We set up camp and basically hung out the rest of the day.
On Monday, March 2, we went to the San Antonio Zoo along with tons of school groups so we had to usually fight our way to see the animals. But it is a very nice zoo with large enclosures and a good variety of animals. We particularly liked the bears and giraffes but really liked the wide variety of birds from around the world and they had several aviaries with free flying birds.
We then went to the Japanese Tea Garden located nearby. They are known as the sunken gardens because they utilize an old quarry to design the garden with lots of steps and view points to enjoy the waterfalls, ponds and gardens.
Tuesday, we took advantage of the area transit service that has a stop right at the campground gates. Very convenient! We took the bus to downtown San Antonio and started at The Alamo. This old Spanish mission saw the battle for Texas independence from Mexico where brave and determined Texans lost the battle to over 3000 Mexican troops but the revolution had begun. Interesting to see the church and surrounding building that were in the battle.
We then headed over to the River Walk which meanders through downtown with lots of shops and restaurants along the San Antonio River. We walked along the river, took a boat ride along the river and found a nice outdoor Mexican restaurant for lunch and people watching. It connects the historical area of town with modern malls and huge hotels. Very nice.
Wednesday, March 4, we went to San Antonio Museum of Art which is housed in the old Lone Star Brewery, built in the 1840s, and had been beautifully restored and modernized to house the galleries. The collections specializes on ancient art work from around the world some dating to 2000 BC. It is amazing how detailed and intricate the piece are. We ate lunch in the cafe looking over the river.
We caught the bus downtown again on Thursday and caught another bus to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. Spending almost three hours there we walked all over the grounds and saw lots of flowers including tulips,
walked the Texas Native Trail which highlights the different plants found in the four climate areas of Texas. They also had beautiful formal garden displays and indoor conservatories with glass pyramid tops.
We rode the bus back into town and we liked the Riverwalk so much we decided to find another restaurant there and ate typical Texan fare of steak and catfish. Very good!
The next day, March 6, we decided to do something different and set off to ride our bikes 15 miles to visited the four other Spanish Missions here. The bike trail, that follows the San Antonio River connects the missions and is very flat,
which we enjoyed!,
and affords many beautiful views of the river and countryside. The mission range in size and condition from San Jose
that is very large and well maintained to the Mission Espada that was quite small with little left of the original buildings.
We also visited San Juan
and Concepcion Missions.
It was a very nice day to be outside on bikes. It was interesting to learn that the mission were setup to bring Christianity but also to force the native people into European culture.
On out last day in San Antonio we visited Mitchell Lake Audubon Center where we drove on dikes around several ponds and walked around one of the ponds. We saw 29 bird species, mostly water fowl but some birds. Very nice birding area. When we got back to camp we rode bikes 11 mile along the Salado Creek Greenway that borders the campground. Nice level ride for us.
Sunday, March 8 found us moving to Austin and McKinney Falls State Park on the South side of Austin. It rained most of Monday so we decided to go to the Bullock Museum which is a museum of the history of Texas and all things Texas.We started on the third floor and learned all about the land, culture and technology of Texas. Moving to the second floor, we learned about Texas history or “Building the Texas Identity” as they called it. The first floor answered the question “When did the story of Texas begin?” and talked about the native Americans and also had the ruins of the LaBelle, a French ship that sunk off the coast of Texas in 1686. It was an excellent museum and I think we can that we now probably know as much about Texas history as most Texan middle schoolers.
On March 10 we went to the Lady BirdJohnson Wildflower Center. It is a beautiful place showing different Texas habitats - Hill Country, Savanah Meadows and Woodlands and saw all the different plants and flowers that grow in these areas. We spent three hours roaming around and saw Texas Bluebonnets, Giant Spiderwort, Indian Paint Brush, Pink Evening Primrose, and Engelmann’s Daisy.
On the way home we found out for the second day in a row how terrible the traffic is in the Austin area.
We took a day off on the 11th staying around the park and close to camp. We rode bikes on a 5 mile trail, we saw both the upper and lower McKinney falls on Onion Creek and enjoyed a lazy day.
On Thursday March 12 we went down to the city proper, via surfaces roads to avoid the highways, to visited the Texas State Capital. This beautiful building made of Texas pink granite sits on a hill and is very impressive in its style and size. Interestingly - Texas funded building capital by giving the builder 3-million acres in the panhandle area. Everything turns out to be big in Texas. We took a tour inside the capital that included the senate and representatives chambers, the rotunda-that is taller that the US capital, and subterranean annex to provide office space in the 1990’s with out ruining the capital grounds.
On the way back we stopped at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. Charles Umlauf was a sculptor who lived from 1910 to 1994 and taught at the University of Texas. 59 of his sculptures are displayed around the garden, mostly human figures and animals made of bronze.
We went to the south side of Austin on Friday to see the Zilker Botanical gardens. Our favorite areas in this garden were the Prehistoric Garden full of ferns and palms where paleontologists actually found fossils of dinosaur tracks.
We also liked the Japanese Garden with many steps, levels, streams, and ponds, We saw our first Azaleas and Magnolias of the season. We spent a lot of time sitting and enjoying the many different views.
We ate lunch outside at Shady Grove Restaurant enjoying Texas fare of pulled pork sandwiches. We then walked along Lady Bird Lake made by damming the Texas Colorado River. It had lots of folks out walking and many, many canoes, kayaks, and paddle boards on the lake. Nice way to spend a warm afternoon.
We needs some groceries so stopped at the local HEB Grocery and were startled by the empty shelves. - the shelves were bare of frozen dinners and vegetables; staples like rice, pasta and canned vegetables and all of you have heard about the run on TP and hand sanitizer. We were able to pickup what we needed but being somewhat remote in campgrounds Mark was commenting all afternoon about how crazy it is for folks to panic buy like this.
Our last day in Austin, March 14, we spent around the parks hiking the Onion Creek trail again and joining a naturalist giving a wildflower walk to see the many blooming plants here. The woods are getting greener daily and the wild flowers more and more prolific. The weather has been very warm and humid with 80 degree highs the last week at Austin.
We have now moved to the Hill Country of Texas and will update more soon.
